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ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD. 


PECK’S 


BAD BOY 


AND HIS PA. 


(FIRST AND ONLY COMPLETE EDITION, 

By Geo. W.' Peck, 

Author of “Peck’s Fun,’’ “Peck’s Sunshine,’’ “Peck’s Boss Book,” Etc. 


With ioo Illustrations by True Williams. 


Chicago: 

W. B. CONKEY COMPANY. 




/ 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE BOY WITH A LAME BACK. 

The Boy Could^t Sit Down-A Practical Joke on the Old Man-A Let- 
.er from Daisy —Guarding the Four Corners— The Old Man is 

Tri't J Generous Ma Asks Awkward Questions— The Boy 
Talked- to with a Bed Slat— No ^ 


Encouragement for a Boy. 
Page 23 


CHAPTER II. 

THE BOY AT WORK AGAIN. 

The Best Boys Full of Tricks-The Old Man Lays Down the Law 
About Jokes— Rubber Hose Macaroni— The Old Man’s Struggles— 

NiffiTt " M Vain— An Inquest Held— Revelry by 

Night— Music in the Woodshed— “Twas Ever Thus" Page 28 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BAD BOY GIVES HIS PA AWAY. 

Sozodont-Making up the’ Spare Bed- 
idnight War Dance— An Appointment by the Coal-bin. 
* Page 32 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE BAD BOY’S FOURTH OF JULY. 

'tuIvZa Setter-Special Arrangements for the Fourth of 

ifp ^ ^ Fireworks-The Explosion-The air Full 

of Pa and Dog and Rockets-The New Hell-A Scene that Beg- 
gars Description p | 


VI 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER V 

THE BAD BOY’S MA COMES HOME. 

Deviltry, Only a Little Fun — The Boy’s Chum — A Lady’s Wardrobe in 
the Old Man’s Room — Ma’s Unexpected Arrival — Where is the 
Huzzy? — Damfino! — The Bad Boy Wants to Travel with a Circus. 
Page 39 


CHAPTER VI. 

HIS PA IS A DARN COWARD. 

His Pa has been a Major — How He Would Deal with Burglars — His 
Bravery Put to the Test — The Ice Revolver — His Pa Begins to 
Pray — Tells Where the Change is — “Please Mr, Burglar Spare a 
Poor Man’s Life!’’ — Ma Wakes up — The Bad Boy and His Chum 
Run — Fish-Pole Sauce — Ma Would Make a good Chief of Police. 
Page 42 


CHAPTER VII. 

HIS PA GETS A BITE. 

His Pa gets too Much Water — The Doctor’s Disagree — How to Spoil 
Boys — His Pa goes to Pewaukee in Search of His Son — Anxious to 
Fish — “Stoper, I’ve got a Whale!” — Overboard — His Pa is Saved 
— A Dollar for his Pants Page 45 


CHAPTER VIII. 

HE IS TOO HEALTHY. ^ 

An Empty Champagne Bottle and a Black Eye — He is arrested — Ocono- 
mowoc for Health — His Pa is an Old Masher — Danced Till the 
Cows Came Home — The Girl from the Sunny South — The Bad Boy 
is sent Home Page 4.9 



HIS PA HAS GOT ’EM AGAIN. 


His Pa is Drinking Hard — He Has Become a Terror — A Jumping Dog 
— The Old Man is Shamefully Assaulted — “This is a Hellish Cli- 
mate My Boy!” — His Pa Swears Off — His Ma Still Sneezing at Lake 
Superior Page 63 


CHAPTER X. 

HIS PA HAS GOT RELIGION. 

The Bad Boy goes to Sunday School — Promises Reformation — The Old 
Man on Trial for Six Months — What Ma Thinks — Ants in Pa’s 
Liver-Pad — The Old Man in Church — Religion is One Thing, Ants 
Another Page 67 


CHAPTER XL 


HIS PA TAKES A TRICK. 


Jamaica Rum and Cards — The Bad Boy Possessed of a Devil — The 
Kind Deacon— At Prayer-Meeting — The Old Man Tells His 
Experience — The Flying Cards~The Prayer Meeting Suddenly 
Closed Page 61 


CHAPTER XIL 

iH 



HIS PA GETS PULLED. 


The Old Man Studies the Bible — Daniel in the Lion’s Den — The Mule 
and the Mule’s Father — Murder in the Third Ward — The Old Man 
Arrested— The Old Man Fans the Dust Out of His Son’s 
Pants - Page 65 





/ 








VIII 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

HIS PA GOES TO THE EXPOSITION. 

The Bad Boy Acts as Guide — The Circus Story — The Old Man Wants 
to Sit Down — Tries to Eat Pancakes — Drinks Some Mineral Water 
— The Old Man Falls in Love With a Wax Woman — A Policeman 
Interferes — The Lights Go Out — The Grocery Man Don’t Want a 
Clerk Page 69 


CHAPTER XIV. 

HIS PA CATCHES ON. 

Two Days and Nights in the Bath Room — Religion Cakes the Old 
Man’s Breast — The Bad Boy’s Chum Dressed Up as a Girl — The 
Old Man Deluded — The Couple Start For the Court House Park — 
His Ma Appears on the Scene — “ If You Love Me, Kiss Me? Ma 
to the Rescue — “I Am Dead, Am I?” — His Pa Throws a Chair 
Through the Transom Page 74 


CHAPTER XV. 

HIS PA AT THE REUNION. 

The Old Man in Military Splendor — Tells How He Mowed Down the 
Rebels — “I and Grant” — What is a Sutler? — Ten Dollars for 
Pickles ! — "Let Us Hang Him!” — The Old Man On the Run — He 
Stands Up to Supper — The Bad Boy is to Die at Sunset. Page 79 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE BAD BOY IN LOVE. 

Are You a Christian? — No Getting, to Heaven on Small Potatoes — The 
Bad Boy Has to Chew Cobs — Ma Says it’s Good for a Boy to be in 
Love — Love Weakens the Bad Boy — How Much Does it Cost to 
get Married?— Mad Dog— Never Eat Ice Cream Page 83 


CONTENTS. 


IX 


CHAPTER XVII. 

HIS PA FIGHTS HORNETS. 

The Old Man Looks Bad — The Woods of Wauwatosa — The Old Man 
Takes a Nap — “Helen Damnation!” — “Hell Is Out for Noon” — 
The Liver Medicine — Its Wonderful Effects — The Bad Boy Is 
Drunk — Give Me a Lemon ! — A Sight of the Comet I — The Hired 
Girl’s Religion Page 88 


CHAPTER XVHI. 

HIS PA GOES HUNTING. 

Mutilated Jaw — The Old Man Has Taken to Swearing Again — Out 
West, Duck Shooting— His Coat Tail Shot Off — Shoots at a Wild 
Goose — The Gun Kicks ! — Throws a Chair at His Son — The 
Astonished She-Deacon Page 97 


CHAPTER XIX. 

HIS PA IS “NISHIATED.” 

Are You a Mason? — No Harm to Play at Lodge — Why Goats are kept 
in Stables — The Bad Boy Gets the Goat Up stairs — The Grand 
Bumper Degree — Kyan Pepper on the Goat’s Beard — “ Bring Forth 
the Royal Bumper”— The Goat on the Rampage Page 101 


CHAPTER XX. 

HIS GIRL GOES BACK ON HIM. 

The Grocery Man is Afraid — But the Bad Boy is a Wreck — “My Girl 
Has Shook Mel ” — The Bad Boy’s Heart Is Broken — Still He 
Enjoys a Bit of Fun— Cod Liver Oil -on the Pancakes— The Hired 
Girls Made Victims— The Bad Boy Vows Vengeance on His Girl 
and the Telegraph Messenger Page 107 


K 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXI, 

HE AND HIS PA IN CHICAGO. 

Nothing Like Traveling to Give Tone— Laughing in the Wrong Place — 
A Diabolical Plot— His Pa Arrested as a Kidnaper — The Numbers 
on the Doors Changed — The Wrong Room — “ Nothin’ the Mazzer 
With Me, Pet!”— The Tell-tale Hat Page 112 


CHAPTER XXII. 

HIS PA IS DISCOURAGED. 

“I Ain’t no Joner!” — The Story of the Ancient Prophet — The Sunday 
School Folks go Back on the Bad Boy — Caged Cats — A Committee 
Meeting — A Remarkable Catstrophe! — “That Boy Beats Hell!” 
Basting the Bad Boy — The Hot Water in the Sponge Trick. 
Page 117 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

HE BECOMES A DRUGGIST. 

“I have Gone into Business!”— A New Rose-Geranium Perfume — The 
Bad Boy in a Druggist’s Store — Practicing on His Pa — The Explo- 
sion — The Seidlitz Powder — His Pa’s Frequent Pains — Pounding 
India-Rubber — Curing a Wart Page 123 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

HE QUITS THE DRUG BUSINESS. 

He Has Dissolved With the Drugger — The Old Lady and the Gin — 
The Bad Boy Ignominiously Fired — How He Dosed His Pa’s 
Brandy — The Bad Boy as “Hawty as a Dook!” He Gets Even 
With His Girl — The Bad Boy Wants a Quiet Place — The Old Man 
Threatens the Parson Page 128 


CONTENTS. 


xr 


CHAPTER XXV. 

HIS PA KILLS HIM. 

Genius at Whistling — A Fur-Lined Cloak a Sure Cure For Consumption 
Another Letter Sent to the Old Man — He Resolves on Immediate 
Punishment — The Bladder-Buffer — The Explosion- A Tragic Scene 
His Pa Vows to Reform Page 134 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

HIS PA MORTIFIED. 

Searching For Sewer Gas— The Powerful Odor of Limburger Cheese at 
Church — The After meeting — Fumigating the House — The Bad 
Boy Resolves to Board at a Hotel Page 139 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

HIS PA BROKE UP. 

The Bad Boy Don’t Think the Grocer Fit For Heaven — He is very 
Severe on His Old Friend — The Need of a New Revised Edition— 
The Bad Boy Turns Reviser — His Pa Reaches For the Poker — A 
Special Providence — The Sled Slewed! — His Pa Under the Mules 
Page 144 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

HIS PA GOES SKATING. 

The Bad Boy Carves a Turkey — His Pa’s Fame as a Skater — The Old 
Man Essays to Skate on Rollers — His Wild Capers— He Spreads 
Himself — Holidays a Condemned Nuisance — The Bad Boy’s Christ- 
mas Presents Page 150 

1 CHAPTER XXIX. 

HIS PA GOES CALLING. 

His Pa Starts Forth— A Picture of the Old Man “Full” — Politeness at 
a Winter Picnic — Assaulted by Sand-baggers — Resolved to Drink no 
More Coffee — A Girl Full of “Aig Nogg,” Page 156 


XII 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

HIS PA DISSECTED. 

The Miseries of the Mumps — No Pickles, Thank You — One More 
Effort to Reform the Old Man — The Bad Boy Plays Medical 
Student — Proceeds to Dissect His Pa — “ Gentlemen, 1 Am Not 
Dead!” — Saved From the Scalpel — “No More Whisky For You.” 
Page 162 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

HIS PA JOINS A TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. 

The Grocery Man Sympathizes with the Old Man — Warns the Bad Boy 
That He May Have a Step-father — The Bad Boy Scorns the Idea — 
Introduces His Pa to the Grand “Worthy Duke ” — The Solemn 
Oath — The Brand Plucked from the Burning Page 169 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

HIS PA’S MARVELOUS ESCAPE. 

The Grocery Man Has no Vaseline — The Old Man Provides Three Fire 
Escapes — One of the Escapes Tested — His Pa Scandalizes the 
Church — “She’s a Darling ! ” — Worldly Music in the Courts of Zion 
Page 174 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HIS PA JOKES HIM. 

The Bad Boy Caught at Last — How to Grow a Mustache — Tar and Cay- 
enne Pepper — The Grocery Man’s Fate is Sealed — Father and Son 
Join in a Practical Joke — Soft Soap on the Steps — Downfall of Minis- 
ters and Deacons — “Ma to the Rescue! ” — The Bad Boy Gets Even 
with his Pa Page 179 


CONTENTS. 


XIIl 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HIS PA GETS MAD. 

A Boom in Court Plaster — The Bad Boy Declines Being “Mauled” — The 
Old Man Gets a Hot Box — The Bad Boy Borrows a Cat — The Bat- 
tle — “Helen Blazes!”— The Cat Victorious — The Bad Boy Draws the 
Line at Kindling Wood Page 185 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

HIS PA AN INVENTOR. 

The Bad Boy a Martyr — The Dog-collar in the Sausage — A Patent Stove 
— The Patent Tested— His Pa a Burnt Offering — Early Breakfast. . . 
Page 190 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

HIS PA GETS BOXED. 

A Parrot for Sale — The Old Man is Down on the Grocer — “A Contrite 
Heart Beats a Bob-tailed Flush!” — Polly’s Responses — Cana Parrot 
go to Hell? — The Old Man Gets Another Black Eye — Duffy Hits for 
Keeps— Nothing Like an Oyster for a Black Eye Page 196 


CONTENTS 


VOL. II. 


CHAPTER I. 

VARIEGATED DOGS. 

The Bad Boy Sleeps on ’the Roof — A Man doesn’t know Everything at 
Forty-eight — The Old Man wants some Pollynurious Water — The 
Dyer’s Dogs — Procession of the Dogs — Pink, Blue, Green and 
White — “Well, I’m Dem’d” — His pa don’t Appreciate.. .. Page 205 


CHAPTER II. 

HIS PA PLAYS JOKES. 

A Man shouldn’t get mad at a joke — The Magic Bouquet— The 
Grocery Man takes a turn — His Pa tries the Bouquet at Church — One 
for the Old Maid — A Fight Ensues — The Bad Boy Threatens the 
Grocery Man — A Compromise Page 210 


CHAPTER III. 

HIS PA STABBED. 

The Grocery Man sets a Trap in Vain — A Boom in Liniment — His Pa 
goes to the Langtry Show — The Bad Boy turns Burglar — The Old 
Man Stabbed — His Account of the Fray — A good Single Handed 
Liar Page 216 


XIV 


CONTENTS. 


XV 


CHAPTER IV. 

HIS PA BUSTED. 

The Craze for Mining Stock — What’s a Bilk? — The Pious Bilk — The 
Old Man Invests — The Deacons and even the Hired Girls. Invest — 
Hot Maple Syrup for One — Getting a Man’s Mind off his Troubles. 
Page 222 

CHAPTER V. 

HIS PA AND DYNAMITE. 

Ths Old Man Selling Silver Stock — Fenian Scare — “Dynamite” in Mil- 
waukee — The Fenian Boom — “ Great God, Hanner! we Are Blowed 
up!” — His Ma has Lots of Sand — The Old Man Useless in Trouble — 
The Dog and the False Teeth Page 228 

CHAPTER VI. 

HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN. 

The Grocery Man Shamefully Abused — He gets hot — Butter, Oleo- 
margarine and Axle Grease — The Old Man Wears Orange on St. 
Patrick’s Day — He has to run for his Life — the Bad Boy at Sunday 
School — Ingersoll and Beecher voted out — Mary had a Lam’. 
Page 234 

CHAPTER VH. 

HIS MA DECEIVED HIM. 

The Bad Boy in Search of Saffron — “ Well, it’s a Girl, if you Must 
know ” — The Bad Boy is Grieved at his Ma’s Deception — “ Sh-h-h 
tootsy go to Sleep ” — "By Low, Baby” — That Settled it with the Cat 
— A Baby! Bah! it makes me tired Page 241 

CHAPTER VHI. 

THE BABY AND THE GOAT. 

The Bad Boy Thinks his Sister will be a Fire Engine — “Old Number Two” 
Baby Requires Goat Milk — The Goat is Frisky — Takes to Eating 
Roman Candles — The Old Man, the Hired Girl, and the Goat — The 
Bad Boy Becomes Teller in a Livery Stable Page 246 


XVI 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER IX. 

A FUNERAL PROCESSION. 

The Bad Boy on Crutches — “You ought to see the Minister” — An 
Eleven Dollar Funeral— The Minister takes the Lines — An Earth- 
quake — After the Earthquake was over — The Policeman fans the 
Minister — A Minister Should have Sense Page 251 


CHAPTER X. 

THE OLD MAN MAKES A SPEECH. 

The Grocery Man and the Bad Boy have a fuss — The Bohemian Band 
— The Bad Boy Organizes a Serenade — “Baby Mine” — The Old 
Man Eloquent — The Bohemians creates a Famine— The Y. M. C. 
A. Announcement Page 257 


CHAPTER XL 

GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

The Grocery Man is Deceived — The Bad Boy Don’t like Moving — Goes 
into the Coloring Business — The Old Man Thoroughly Disgusted — 
Uncle Tom and Topsy — The Old Man Arrested — What the Grocery 
' Man Thinks — The Bad Boy Moralizes on his Fate — Resolves to be 
Good *. .Page 265 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE OLD MAN SHOOTS THE MINISTER. 

The Bad Boy Tries to Lead a Different Life— Murder in the Air — The 
Old Man and His Friends Give Themselves Away — Dreadful Stories 
of Their Wicked Youth — The Chicken Coop Invaded — The Old 
Man to the Rescue— The Minister and the Deacons Salted. Page 269 


CONTENTS. 


XVII 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE BAD BOY A THOROUGHBRED. 

^ The Bad Boy with a Black Eye— A Poor Friendless Girl Excites His Pity 
— Proves Himself a Gallant Knight— The Old Man is Charmed at 
His Son’s Courage— The Grocery Man Moralizes — Fifteen Christs ih 
Milwaukee — The Tables Turned — The Old Man Wears the Boy’s 
Old Clothes Page 276 


CHAPTER XIV. 

ENTERTAINING Y. M. C. A. DELEGATES. 

The Bad Boy Ministers at the Y. M. C. A. Soda Fountain— The Dele- 
gates Flood Themselves with Soda Water — Two Delegates Dealt to 
His Ma— The Night Key — The Fall of the Flower Stand — Delegates 
in the Cellar All Night — The Bad Boy’s Girl is Working His Refor- 
mation Page 282 

CHAPTER XV. 

, HE TURNS SUPE. 

The Bad Boy Quits Jerking Soda— Enters the Dramatic Profession — 
“ What’s a Super?” — The Privileges of aSupe’s Father — Behind the 
Scenes— The Bad Boy Has Played with McCullough — " I Was the 
Populace” — Plays it on His Sunday School Teacher—" I Prithee, 
Au Reservoir, I go Hens!” Page 288 



CHAPTER XVI.* 

UNCLE EZRA PAYS A VISIT. 

Uncle Ezra Causes the Bad Boy to Backslide — Uncle Ezra and the Old 
Man Were Bad Pills — Their Record is Awful — Keeping Uncle Ezra 
on the Ragged Edge — The Bed Slats Fixed — The Old Man Tangled 
Up — This World is not Run Right — Uncle Ezra Makes Him Tired 
Page 295 


XVIll 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

HE DISCUSSES THEOLOGY. 

Meditations on Noah’s Ark — The Garden of Eden — The Ancient Dude — • 
Adam with a Plug Hat On — “ I’m a Thinker from Thinkersville” — 
The Apostles in a Patrol Wagon — Elijah and Elisha — The Prodigal 
Son — A Veal Pot Pie for Dinner Page 301 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE DEPARTED ROOSTER. 

The Grocery Man Discourses on Death — The Dead Rooster — A Bio- 
graphical Sketch — The Tenderness Between the Rooster and His 
Faithful Hen — The Hen Retires to Set — The Chickens ! — The Proud 
Rooster Dies — The Fickle Hen Flirting in Indecent Haste.. Page 308 


CHAPTER XIX. 

ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. 

Uncle Ezra Returns — The Basket on the Steps — The Anonymous Letter 
“O, Brother, That I Should Live to See This Day!” — An Ugly Dutch 
Baby — The Old Man Wheels the Baby Now— A Frog in the Old 
Man’s Bed Page 314 


CHAPTER XX. 

FOURTH OF JULY MISADVENTURES. 

Trouble in the Pistol Pocket — The Grocery Man’s Cat — The Bad Boy a 
Ministering Angel — Asleep on the Fourth of July — Goes With His 
g’rl to the Soldiers’ Home— Terrible Fourth of July Misadventures 
The Girl who Went Out Comes Back a Burnt Offering Page 320 


CONTENTS. 


XIX 


CHAPTER XXL 

• WORKING ON SUNDAY. 

Turning a Grindstone is Healthy — “Not Any Grindstone for Hennery! ’ 
— This Hypocrisy is played Out — Another Job on the Old Man — 
How the Days of the Week Got Mixed — The Numerous Funerals — 
The Minister Appears — The Bad Boy Goes Over the Back Fence, . 
. . i Page 327 


CHAPTER XXII. 

h 

^ THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED. 

The Old Man Begins Drinking Again — Thinks Betting is Harmless — 
Had to Walk Home from Chicago — The Spectacles Changed — A 
Small Suit of Clothes — The Old Man Awfully Bloated — “ Hennery, 
Your Pa is a Mighty Sick Man” — The Swelling Suddenly Goes 
Down Page 333 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE GROCERY MAN AND THE GHOST. 

Ghosts Don’t Steal Wormy Figs — A Grand Rehearsal — The Minister 
Murders Hamlet — The Watermelon Knife — The Old Man Wanted 
to Rehearse the Drunken Scene in Rip Van Winkle — No Hugging 
Allowed — Hamlet Wouldn’t Have Tv/o Ghosts — “How Would You 
Like to be an Idiot?” Page 339 


CHAPTER. XXIV. 

THE CRUEL WOMAN AND THE LUCKLESS DOG. 

The Bad Boy With a Dog and a Black Eye — Where Did You Steal 
Him? — Angels Don’t Break Dogs’ Legs — A Woman Who Breaks 
Dogs’ Legs''Has no Show with St. Peter — Another Burglar Scare 
— The Grocery Delivery Man Scared Page 345 


-( 




2 


XX 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL. 

Why is Lettuce Like a Girl — King Solomon a Fool — Think of Any 
Sane Man Having a Thousand Wives — He Would Have to Have 
Two Hotels During Vacation— 300 Blondes — 600 Brunettes, etc. — A 
Thousand Wives Taking Ice Cream — “ I Don’t Envy Solomon His 
Thousand.” Page 351 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

FARM EXPERIENCES. 

The Bad Boy Works on a Farm for a Deacon — He Knows When He 
Has Got Enough— How the Deacon Made Him Flax Around— 
And How He Made it Warm for the Deacon Page 357 


CHAPTER XXVII 

DRINKING CIDER IN THE CELLAR. 

The Deacon Will Not Accept Hennery’s Resignation— He Wants But- 
ter on His Pancakes — His Chum Joins Him — The Skunk in the 
Cellar — The Poor Boy Gets the “ Ager.” Page 364 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, 


Frontispiece Geo. W. Peck 

A nigger chaser got after Ma and treed her on top of the sofa 37 

A yellow cat without any tail was walking over the minister 120 

And Pa used to sit up nights to look at it 223 

“And pitch hay and smell the sweet perfume” 358 

Bimeby we let him down 172 

Everybody got out of the way except a girl 152 

Everybody lays everything that is done to me 191 

Finally he got to be a cowboy, herding hogs 306 

For God’s sake, gentlemen, what does this mean? 165 

Girl wanted to cook 215 

Grandfather’s shotgun 296 

“Great God! Hanner, we are blowed up.” 230 

He was mad and glad 30 

He looked just like Pa when he tries to smile 232 

He hoped to meet them all in 63 

He was exhorting a girl in tights 66 

Here’s to your liver, boys 92 

He said it was a friend of his 158 

He said he was a weak and humble follower of the lamb 141 

His hand looked like a ham 335 

I will lay for the messenger boy 109 

I asked her if that was what she wanted 124 

I guess it knocked the breath out of him 154 

I was not afraid no more 160 

I didn’t blame the hired girls for being scared 176 

I borrowed a cat 186 

I told him there was only one dog and cat 208 

I have received my death wound 218 * 

I told Pa if he would put some tar on his legs 226 

I could see my girls’ bangs raise right up 286 

I know it’s wrong to think so, but how can I help it? 304 

XXI 


XXII 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 


I never saw a more perfect picture of devotion 309 

I thought it would be a good way to get even with Duffy 321 

I thought of the cistern 272 

“ I am thy fathers ghost” T 339 

If I was a provision pirate 214 

“ If you say so, I’ll let him go,” said the policeman ' . . 50 

It struck her right on the nose 212 

It wasn’t long before folks began going to church 330 

Just then Eliza began to skip across the ice 293 

Ma said a little of that would go a good ways 341 

Ma made me play for her to sleep 289 

Ma went to the head of the stairs and called Pa 271 

Ma shook her handkerchief at Polly 198 

“ Ma couldn’t stand it any longer ” 76 

Mud, burrs and mosquitos were thick 360 

My uncle Ezra is pretty rough 299 

" My little man, I guess you’d better drive” 253 

“ Nothin the matter with me, pet ” 115 

O, brother, that I should live to see this day 316 

O, how her hand trembled when she raised the glass 278 

Old number two, 246 

One sled runner caught him in the trousers’ leg 148 

Pa looked mad and stepped into the doorway 25 

Pa wanted her to sit in his lap 86 

Pa was yelling murder and Ma was screaming fire 104 

Pa opened one eye and looked at me 121 

Pa was mad just because the minister had his hand on her shoulder 132 

Pa said, “ Now Hennery ” 136 

Pa followed me as far as the sidewalk 146 

Pa went to dig potatoes for dinner 325 

Pa stepped out on the porch 259 

Pa marked eyes and nose on the pillow 33 

Pa said it made a man feel good to get up early * 194 

Pa, Ma, “Howly !” “MeinGott!” 110 

Pa’s shirt was no protection at all 187 

Scat, you brute 243 

" Say, look-a-here,” said the grocery man 347 

Talk about spreading the gospel 182 

Take it away! my head is all wrong too 337 

That is not the smallpox Pa has got 89 

That lettuce reminds me of a girl” 352 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


XXIII 


That’s a pretty narrow escape, old man 167 

The baby is teething 355 

The deacon got off the counter with his hand clasped 220 

The dog gave one bark and went for Pa’s duster 54 

The policeman took Pa by the neck 265 

The grocery man took a dried codfish by the tail 235 

The policeman told Pa to go home and lock himself in 237 

The grocery man 24 

The man began to climb 349 

The liver pad was on the floor and Pa stamping on it 59 

The soldier started after Pa with sabre drawn 80 

The gun flew out of his hands 99 

The goat would hit it every time 103 

The minister and two deacons 181 

Then the drug man told me to face the door 129 

Then he gave him a side winder in both eyes 201 

Then I slipped upstairs and looked over the bannister 40 

Then I stood off and told him to hold up his hands 43 

Then Pa crawled out and shook himself 47 

They made a boy believe he was bigger than Grant, 328 

This is for ladies only 72 

Well, I pounded that chunk all day 126 

Well, here comes our baby wagon 318 

When Pa held back they jerked him along 114 

“Whoosh” 367 

With a paper pinned on its breast • 312 


A CARD FROM THE AUTHOR; 


Office of “Peck’s Sun,” 
Milwaukee^ 

Gents — If you have made up your minds that the world will cease 
to move unless these “Bad Boy” articles are given to the public in book 
form, why go ahead, and peace to your ashes. The “Bad Boy” is not a 
“myth,” though there may be some stretches of imagination in the ar- 
ticles. The counterpart of this boy is located in every city, village and 
country hamlet throughout the land. He is wide awake, full of vinegar 
and is ready to crawl under the canvas of a circus or repeat a hundred 
verses of the New Testament in Sunday School. He knows where every 
melon patch in the neighborhood is located, and at what hours the dog 
is chained up. He will tie an oyster can to a dog’s tail to give the dog 
exercise, of will fight at the drop of the hat to protect the smaller boy or 
a school girl. He gets in his work everywhere there is a fair prospect 
of fun, and his heart is easily touched by an appeal in the right way, 
though his coat-tail is oftener touched with a boot than his heart is by 
kindness. But he shuffles through life until the time comes for him to 
make a mark in the world, and then he buckles on the harness and goes 
to the front, and becomes successful, and then those who said he would 
bring up in State Prison, remember that he always was a mighty smart 
lad, and they never tire of telling of some of his deviltry when he was a 
boy, though they thought he was pretty tough at the time. This book 
is respectfully dedicated to boys, to the men who have been boys them- 
selves, to the girls who like the boys, and to the mothers, bless them, 
who like both the boy^ and the girls. 

Very respectfully. 


XXIY 


GEO. W. PECK. 


PECK’S Bad Boy 

AND HIS PA. 


CHAPTER 1. 

THE BOY WITH A LAME BACK. 

Tbc boy couldn’t sit down — A practical joke on the Old Man — A letter 
from “Daisy” — Guarding the four corners — The Old Man is un- 
usually generous — Ma asks awkward questions — The boy talked 
to with a bed-slat — No encouragement for a boy. 

A YOUNG fellow who is pretty smart on general princi- 
ples, and who is always in good humor, went into a store 
the other morning limping and seemed to be broken up 
generally. The proprietor asked him if he would’t sit down, 
and he said he couldn’t very well, as his back was lame. He 
seemed discouraged, and the proprietor asked him what was 
the matter. “Well,” says he, as he put his hand on his 
pistol pocket and groaned: “There is no encouragement 
for a boy to have any fun nowadays. If a boy tries to play 
an innocent joke he gets kicked all over the house.” The 
store keeper asked him what had happened to disturb his 
hilarity. He said he had played a joke on his father and he 
had been limping ever since. 

“ You see, I thought the old man was a little spry. You 
know he is no spring chicken yourself; and though his eyes 
are not what they used to be, yet he can see a pretty girl 
further than I can. The other day I wrote a note in a fine 


/ 

/ 


24 peck's bad boy. 

hand and addressed it to him, asking him to meet me on the 
corner of Wisconsin and Milwaukee streets, at 7:30 on Satur- 
day evening, and signed the name of ‘ Daisy’ to it. At sup- 
per time Pa he was all shaved up and had his hair plastered 
over the bald spot, and he got on some clean cuffs, and said 
he was going to the Consistory to initiate some candidates 
from the country, and he might not be in till late. He 
didn’t eat much supper, and hurried off with my umbrella. 
I winked at Ma, but didn’t say anything. At 7:30 I went 

down town and he was standing 
there by the postoffice corner, in 
a dark place. I went by him and 
said, ‘ Hello, Pa, what are you 
doing there?’ He said he was 
waiting for a man. I went down 
street and pretty soon I went up 
on the other corner by Chapman’s 
and he was standing there. You 
see, he didn’t know what corner 
‘ Daisy’ was going to be on, and 
he had to cover all four corners. 
I saluted him and asked him if he 
hadn’t found his man yet, and he 
said no, the man was a little late. It is a mean boy that 
won’t speak to his Pa when he sees him standing on a corner. 
I went up street and saw Pa cross over by the drug store in a 
sort of a hurry, and I could see a girl going by with a water- 
proof on, but she skited right along and Pa looked kind 
of solemn, the way he does when I ask him for new clothes. 
I turned and came back and he was standing in the doorway, 
and I said, ‘ Pa, you will catch cold if you stand around 
waiting for a man. You go down to the Consistory and let 
me lay for the man. ’ Pa said, ‘never you mind, you go about 
your business and I will attend to the man.” 



PECK S BAD BOY. 


25 



“Well, when a boy’s Pa tells him to never you mind, and 
looks spunky, my experience is that a boy wants to go right 
away from there, and I went down street. I thought I would 
cross over, go up the other side, and see how long he would 
stay. There was a girl or two 
going up ahead of me, and I 
seeamanhurryingacrossfrom ^ 
the drug store to Van Pelt’s 
corner. It was Pa, and as the 
girls went along and never 
looked around 


PA LOOKED MAD AND STEPPED INTO THE DOORWAY. 

Pa looked mad and stepped into the doorway. It was about 
eight o’clock then, and Pa was tired, and I felt sorry for him and 
I went up to him and asked him for half a dollar to go to the 
Academy. I neverknew him to shell out so freely andso quick. 


26 


PECK S BAD BOY 


He gave me a dollar, and I told him I would go and get it 
changed and bring him back the half dollar, but he said 
I needn’t mind the change. It is awful mean of a boy that 
has always been treated well to play it on his Pa that way, 
and I felt ashamed. As I turned the corner and saw him 
standing there shivering, waiting for the man, my conscience 
troubled me, and I told a policeman to go and tell Pa that 
‘Daisy’ had been suddenly taken with worms, and would 
not be there that evening. I peeked around the corner and 
Pa and the policeman went off to get a drink. I was glad 
they did, cause Pa needed it, after standing around so long. 
Well, when I went home the joke was so good I told Ma 
about it, and she was mad. I guess she was mad at me for 
treating Pa that way. I heard Pa come home about eleven 
o’clock, and Ma was real kind to him. She told him to 
warm his feet, cause they were just like chunks of ice. Then 
she asked him how many they initiated in the Consistory, 
and he said six, and then she asked if they initiated ‘ Daisy’ 
in the Consistory, and pretty soon I heard Pa snoring. In 
the morning he took me into the basement, and gave me 
the hardest talking to that I ever had, with a bed slat. He 
said that he knew that I wrote that note all the time, and he 
thought he would pretend that he was looking for “Daisy,” 
just to fool me. It don’t look reasonable that a man would 
catch epizootic and rheumatism just to fool his boy, 
does it? What did he give me the dollar for? Ma 
and Pa don’t seem to call each other pet any more, and 
as for me, they both look at me as though I was a hard cit- 
izen. I am going to Missouri to take Jesse James’ place. 
There is no encouragement for a boy here. Well, good 
morning. If Pa comes in here asking for me tell him that 
you saw an express wagon going to the morgue with the 
remains of a pretty boy who acted as though he died from 
concussion of a bed slat on the pistol pocket. That will 


peck's bad boy. 


27 


make Pa feel sorry. O, he has got the awfulest cold, 
though.” 

And the boy limped out to separate a couple of dogs 
that were fighting. 


y 

i 


CHAPTER II. 


THE BAD BOY AT WORK AGAIN. 

■V 

The best boys full of tricks — The Old Man lays down the law about 
jokes — Rubber-hose macaroni — The Old Man’s struggles — Chewing 
vigorously but in vain — An inquest held — Revelry by night — Music 
in the woodshed — “’Twas ever thus.” 

Of course all boys are not full of tricks, but the best of 
them are. That is, those who are readiest to play innocent 
jokes, and who are continually looking for chances to make 
Rome howl, are the most apt to turn out to be first-class 
business men. There is a boy in the Seventh Ward who is 
so full of fun that sometimes it makes him ache. He is the 
same boy who not long since wrote a note to his father and 
signed the name “ Daisy” to it, and got the old man to stand 
on a corner for two hours waiting for the girl. After that 
scrape the old man told the boy that he had no objection to 
innocent jokes, such as would not bring reproach upon him, 
and as long as the boy confined himself to jokes that would 
simply cause pleasant laughter, and not cause the finger of 
scorn to be pointed at a parent, he would be the last one to 
kick. So the boy has been for the three weeks trying to 
think of some innocent joke to play on his father. The old 
man is getting a little near sighted, and his teeth are not as 
good as they used to be, but the old man will not admit it* 
Nothing that anybody can say can make him own up that 
his eyesight is failing, or that his teeth are poor, and he 
would bet a hundred dollars that he could see as far as ever. 
The boy knew the failing, and made up his mind to demon- 
strate to the old man that he was rapidly getting off his base. 

28 


peck's bad boy 


29 


The old person is very fond of macaroni, and eats it about 
three times a week. The other day the boy was in a drug 
store and noticed in a show case a lot of small rubber hose, 
about the size of sticks of macaroni, such as is used on 
nursing bottles, and other rubber utensils. It was white and 
nice, and the boy’s mind was made up at once. He bought 
a yard of it, and took it home. When the macaroni was 
cooked and ready to be served, he hired the table girl to help 
him play it on the old man. They took a pair of shears and 
cut the rubber hose in pieces about the same length as the 
pieces of boiled macaroni, and put them in a saucer with a 
little macaroni over the rubber pipes, and placed the dish at 
the old man’s plate. Well, we suppose if ten thousand peo- 
ple could have had reserved seats and seen the old man 
struggle with the India rubber macaroni, and have 
seen the boy’s struggle to keep from laughing, 
they would have had more fun than they would 
at a circus. First the old delegate attempted to cut 
the macaroni into small pieces, and failing, he remarked 
that it was not cooked enough. The boy said his 
macaroni was cooked too tender, and that his father’s 
teeth were so poor that he would have to eat soup entirely 
pretty soon. The old man said, “ Never you mind my 
teeth, young man,” and decided that he would not complain 
of anything again. He took up a couple of pieces of rub- 
ber and one piece of macaroni on a fork and put them in 
his mouth. The macaroni dissolved easy enough, and went 
down perfectly easy, but the flat macaroni was too much for 
him. V He chewed on it for a minute or two, and talked 
about the weather in order that none of the family should 
see that he was in trouble, and when he found the macaroni 
would not down, he called their attention to something out 
of the window and took the rubber slyly from his mouth, 
and laid it under the edge of his plate. He was more than 


half convinced that his teeth were played out, but went on 
eating something else for awhile, and finally he thought he 
would just chance the macaroni once more for luck, and he 
mowed away another fork full in his mouth. It was the 
same old story. He chewed like a seminary girl chewing gum, 
and his eyes stuck out and his face became red, and his wife 
looked at him as though afraid he was going to die of 
apoplexy, and finally the servant girl burst out laughing, and 



HE WAS MAD AND GLAD. 


went out of the room with her apron stuffed in her mouth, 
and the boy felt as though it was unhealthy to tarry too 
long at the table and he went out. 

Left alone with his wife the old man took the rubber 
macaroni from his mouth and laid it on his plate, and he 
and his wife held an inquest over it. The wife tried to spear 
it with a fork, but couldn’t make any impression on it, and 
then she see it was rubber hose, and told the old man. He 
was mad and glad, at the same time; glad because he 
had found his teeth were not to blame, and mad because the 
grocer had sold him boarding house macaroni. Then the 
girl came in and was put on the confessional, and told aU, 


®eqk’s bad boy. 


31 


and presently there Ttas a sound of revelry by night, in the 
wood shed, and the still, small voice was saying, “ O, Pa, 
don’t! you said you didn’t £are for innocent jokes. Oh!” 
And then the old man, between the strokes of the piece of 
clap-board would say, ‘‘ Feed your father a hose cart next, 
won’t ye. Be firing car springs and clothes wringers down 
me next, eh? Put some gravy on a rubber overcoat, proba- 
bly, and serve it to me for salad. Try a piece of overshoe, 
with a bone in it, for my beafsteak, likely. Give your poor 
old father a slice of rubber bib in place of tripe to-morrow, 
I expect. Boil me a rubber water bag for apple dumplings, 
pretty soon, if I don’t look out. There! You go and split 
the kindling wood.” ’Twas ever thus. A boy can’t have 
any fun now days. ' 


CHAPTER III. 


THE BAD BOY GIVES HIS PA AWAY. 

Pa is a hard citizen — Drinking sozodont — Making up the spare bed — 

The midnight war-dance — An appointment by the coal bin. 

The bad boy’s mother was out of town for a week, and 
when she came home she found everything topsy turvey. 
The beds were all mussed up, and there was not a thing hung 
np anywhere. She called the bad boy and asked him what 
in the deuce had been going on, and he made it pleasant for 
his Pa about as follows: 

“ Well, Ma, I know I will get killed, but I shall die like a 
man. When Pa met you at the depot he looked too inno- 
cent for any use, but he’s a hard citizen, and don’t you forget 
it. He hasn’t been home a single night till after eleven 
o’clock, and he was tired every night, and he had somebody 
come home with him.” 

“ O, heavens. Hennery,” said the mother, with a sigh, “ are 
you sure about this?” 

“ Sure!” says the bad boy, “ I was on to the whole racket. 
The first night they came home awful tickled, and I guess 
they drank some of your Sozodont, caused they seemed to 
foam at the mouth. Pa wanted to put his friend in the spare 
bed, but there were no sheets on it, and he went to rumaging 
around in the drawers for sheets. He got out all the towels 
and table-cloths, and made up the bed with table-cloths, the 
first night, and in the morning the visitor kicked because 
there was a big coffee stain on the table-cloth sheet. You 
know that table-cloth you spilled the coffee on last spring, 

82 


peck’s bad boy. 


when Pa scared you by having his whiskers cut off. vy, . 
raised thunder around the room. Pa took your night-shirt, 
you know the one with the lace work all down the front, and 
put a pillow in it, and set it on a chair, and then took a 
burned match and marked eyes and nose on the pillow, and 
put your bonnet on it, and then they had a war dance. Pa 
hurt the bald spot on his head by hitting it against the gas 



PA MARKED EYES AND NOSE ON THE PILLOW. 


chandelier, and then he said dammit. Then they throwed 
pillows at each other. Pa’s friend didn’t have any night 
^hirt, and Pa gave his friend one of your’n, and the friend 
took that old hoop-skirt in the closet, the one Pa always 
steps on when he goes in the closet after a towel and hurts 
his bare foot, you know,, and put it under the night shirt, and 
th^ walked around arm in arm. O, it made me tired to see 

a man Pa’s age act so like a darned fool.” 
s 


“ Hennery,” says the mother, with a deep meaning in her 
voice, ” I want to ask you one question. Did your Pa’s 
friend wear a dress?'" 

“ O, yes,” said the bad boy, coolly, not noticing the pale 
face of his Ma, “ the friend put on that old blue dress of 
yours, with the pistol pocket in front, you know, and pinned 
a red cloth on for a train, and they danced the can-can.” 

Just at this point Pa came home to dinner, and the bad 
boy said,. “ Pa, I was just telling Ma what a nice time you 
had the first night she went away, with the pillow, and — ” 

“ Hennery !” says the old gentleman severely, “you area 
confounded fool.” 

“ Izick,” said the wife more severely, “ Why did you bring 
a female home with you that night. Have you got no — ” 

“ O, Ma,” says the bad boy, “ it was not a woman. It was 
young Mr. Brown, Pa’s clerk at the store, you know.” 

“ O!” said Ma, with a smile and a sigh. 

“ Hennery,” said his stern parent, “ I want to see you 
there by the coal bin for a minute or two. You are the gaul 
durndest fool I ever see. What you want to learn the first 
thing you do is to keep your mouth shut,” and then they 
went on with the frugal meal, while Hennery seemed to t'rel 
as though something was coming. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE BAD boy’s FOURTH OF JULY. 

Va is a Pointer not a Setter — Special arrangements for the Fourth of 
July — A grand supply of fire works — The explosion — The air full 
of Pa and dog and rockets — The new Hell — A Scene that beggars 
description. 

“ How long do you think it will be before your father 
will be able to come down to the office? ” asked the druggist 
of the bad boy as he was buying some arnica and court 
plaster. 

“ O, the doc. says he could come down now if he would, 
on some street where there were no horses to scare,” said the 
boy as he bought some gum, “but he says he ain’t in no hurry 
to come down till his hair grows out, and he gets some new 
clothes made. Say, do you wet this court plaster and stick 
it on?” 

The druggist told him how the court plaster worked, and 
then asked him if his Pa couldn’t ride down town. 

“Ride down? well, I guess nix. He would have to set 
down if he rode down town, and Pa is no setter this trip, 
he is a pointer. Thaft’s where the pin wheel struck him.” 

“ Well how did it happen ? ” asked the druggist, as he 
wrapped a yellow paper over the bottle of arnica, and 
twisted the ends, and then helped the boy stick the strip of 
court plaster on his nose. 

“ Nobody knows how it happened but Pa, and when I 
come near to ask him about it he feels around his night shirt 
where his pistol pocket would be if it was pants he had on, 
and tells me to leave his sight forever, and I leave too, 


36 


PECK^S BAD BOY. 


quick. You see he is afraid I will get hurt every 4th of 
July, and he told me if I wouldn’t fire a fire-cracker all day, 
he would let me get four dollars’ worth of nice fire-works 
and he would fire them off for me in the evening in the 
back yard. I promised, and he gave me the money and I 
bought a dandy lot of fire-works, and don’t you forget it. 
I had a lot of rockets and Roman candles, and six-pin 
wheels, and a lot of nigger chasers, and some of these can- 
non fire-crackers, and torpedoes, and a box of parlor match- 
es. I took them home and put the package in our big 
stuffed chair and put a newspaper over them. 

Pa always takes a nap in that stuffed chair after dinner, 
and he went into the sitting room and I heard him driving 
our poodle dog out of that chair, and heard him ask the dog 
what he was a-chewing, and just then the explosion took 
place, and we all rushed in there. I tell you what I honestly 
think. I think that dog was chewing that box of parlor 
matches. This kind that pop so when you step on them. 
Pa was just going to set down when the whole air was filled 
with dog, and Pa, and rockets, and everything. When I 
got in there Pa had a sofa pillow trying to put the dog out. 
In the meantime Pa’s linen pants were afire. I grabbed a 
pail of this indigo water that they had been rinsing clothes 
with and throwed it on Pa, or there wouldn’t have been a 
place on him bigger’n a six-pence that wasn’t burnt, and 
then he threw a camp chair at me and told me to go to 
Gehenna. Ma says that’s the new hell they have got up in 
the revised edition of the Bible for bad boys. When Pa’s 
pants were out his coat-tail blazed up and a Roman candle 
was firing blue and red balls at his legs, and a rocket got in- 
to his white vest. The scene beggared description, like that 
Racine fire. A nigger chaser got after Ma and treed her on 
top of the sofa, and another one took after a girl that Ma 
invited to dinner, and burnt one of her stockings so she had 


peck’s bad boy. 


37 


to wear one of Ma’s stockings, a good deal too big for her, 


home. After things got 
a little quiet, and we 
opened the doors and 
windows to let out the 
smoke and smell of burnt 
dog hair, and Pa’s whisk- 
ers, the big fire crackers 
began to go off, and a 
policeman came to the 
door and asked what was 
the matter, and Pa told 
him to go along with me 
to Gehenna, but I don’t 
want to go with a police- 
man. It would give me 
dead away. Well, there 
was nobody hurt much but 
the dog and Pa. I felt 
awful sorry for the dog. 
He hasn’t got hair enough 
to cover hisself. Pa didn’t 
have much hair anyway, 
except by the ears, but he 
thought a good deal of his 
whiskers, cause they wasn’t 
very gray. Say, couldn’t 
you send this anarchy up 
to the house? If I go up 
there Pa will say I am the 
damest fool on record. 
This is the last Fourth of 
July you catch me cele- 
brating. 1 am going to 



A NIGGER CHASER GOT AFTER MA AND 
TREED HER ON TOP OF THE SOFA. 


38 peck’s bad boy. 

work in a glue factory, where nobody will ever come to see me. ” 
And the boy went out to pick up some squib fire crackers, 
that had failed to explode, in front of the drug store. 




CHAPTER V, 


THE BAD boy’s MA COMES HOME. 

No deviltry only a little fun — The bad boy’s chum — A lady’s wardrobe 
in the Old Man’s room — Ma’s unexpected arrival — Where is the 
huzzy? — Damfino! — The bad boy wants to travel with a circus. 

“When is your ma coming back?” asked the grocery 
man, of the bad boy, as he found him standing on the side- 
walk when the grocery was opened in the morning, taking 
some pieces of brick out of his coat tail pockets. 

“ O she got back at midnight, last night,” said the boy 
as he eat a few blue berries out of a case. “ That’s what 
makes me up so early. Pa has been kicking at these pieces 
of brick with his bare feet, and when I came away he had 
his toes in his hand and was trying to go back up stairs on 
one foot. Pa haint got no sense.” 

“I am afraid you are a terror,” said the grocery man, as 
he looked at the innocent face of the boy, “You are always 
making your parents some trouble, and it is a wonder to me 
they don’t send you to some reform school. What deviltry 
were you up to last night to get kicked this morning?’ 

“ No deviltry, just a little fun. You see, Ma went to 
Chicago to stay a week, and she got tired, and telegraphed 
she would be home last night, and Pa was down town and I 
forgot to give him the dispatch, and after he went to bed, 
me and a chum of mine thought we would have a 4th of 
July. 

You see, my chum has got a sister about as big as Ma, 
and we hooked some of her clothes and after Pa got to 
snoring we put them in Pa’s room. O, you’d a laffed. We 

89 


40 


peck’s bad boy. 


put a pair of number one slippers with blue stockings, down 
in front of the rocking chair, beside Pa’s boots, and a red 
corset on a chair, and my chum’s sister’s best black silk 
dress on another chair, and a hat with a white feather on, on 
the bureau, and some frizzes on the gas bracket, and every- 
thing we could find 
that belonged to a 
girl in my chum’s 
sister’s room. O, we 
got a red parasol too, 
and left it right in the 
middle of the floor. 

Well, when I looked 
at the layout, and 
heard Pa snoring, I j|m\ 
thought I should die. 

You see, Ma knows 
Pa is a darn good fel- 
ler, but she is easily 
excited. My chum 
slept with me that 
night, and when we 
heard the door-bell 
ring, I stuffed a pillow 
in my mouth. There 
was nobody to meet 
Ma at the depot, and 
she hired a hack and 
came right up. No- 
body heard the bell 
but me, and I had to go down and let Ma in She was pretty 
hot, now you bet, at not being met at the depot. 

“Where’s your father?’’ said she, as she began to go up 

stairs. 



THEN I SLIPPED UP-STAIRS AND LOOKED 
OVER THE BANISTERS. 


peck’s bad boy. 


41 


I told her I guessed Pa had gone to sleep by this time, 
but I heard a good deal of noise in the room about an hour 
ago, and may be he was taking a bath. Then I slipped up 
stairs and looked over the banisters. Ma said something 
about heavens and earth, and where is the huzzy, and a lot 
of things I couldn’t hear, and Pa said damfino and its no 
such thing, and the door slammed and they talked for two 
hours. I s’pose they finally layed it to me, as they always 
do, ’cause Pa called me very early this morning, and when I 
came down stairs he came out in the hall and his face was 
redder’n a beet, and he tried to stab me with his big toe- 
nail, and if it hadn’t been for these pieces of brick he would 
have hurt my feelings. I see they had my chum’s sister’s 
clothes all pinned up in a newspaper; and I s’pose when I 
go back I shall have to carry them home, and then she will 
be down on me. I’ll tell you what, I have got a good notion 
to take some shoemakers’ wax and stick my chum on my back 
and travel with a circus as a double-headed boy from Borneo. 
A fellow could have more fun, and not get kicked all the 
time. 

And the boy sampled some strawberries in a case in front 
of the store and went down the street whistling for his chum, 
who was looking out of an alley to see if the coast was clear. 


CHAPTER VI. 


HIS PA IS A DARN COWARD. 

His Pa has been a major — How he would deal with burglars — His 
bravery put to the test— The ice revolver. — His Pa begins to pray— 
Tells where the change is — “Please, Mr. Burglar, spare a poor 
mans life!” — Ma wakes up — The bad boy and his chum run — Fish- 
pole sauce — Ma would make a good chief of police. 

“ I suppose you think my Pa is a brave man,” said the 
boy to the grocer, as he was trying a new can opener on a 
tin biscuit box in the grocery, while the grocer was put- 
ting up some canned goods for the boy, who said the goods 
were for the folks to use at a picnic, but which was to be 
taken out camping by the boy and his chum. 

“ O, I suppose he is a brave man,” said the grocer as 
he charged the goods to the boy’s father. “Your Pa is 
called a major, and you know at the time of the re-union 
he wore a veteran badge, and talked to the boys about 
how they suffered during the war.” 

“Suffered nothing,” remarked the boy with a sneer, 
“unless they suffered from the peach brandy and leather 
pies Pa sold them. Pa was a suttler, that’s the kind of a 
veteran he was, and he is a coward.” 

“What makes you think your Pais a coward?” asked the 
grocer, as he saw the boy slipping some sweet crackers into 
his pistol pocket. 

“ Well, my chum and me tried him last night, and he is 
so sick this morning that he can’t get up. You see, since 
the burglars got into Magie’s, Pa has been telling what 
he would do if the burglars got into our house. He said he 
would jump out of bed and knock one senseless with 

42 


peck’s bad boy. 


43 


his fist, and throw the other over the banister. I told my 
chum Pa was a coward, and we fixed up like burglars, with 
masks on, and I had Pa’s long hunting boots on, and we 
pulled caps down over our eyes, and looked fit to frighten a 
policeman. I took Pa’s meerschaum pipe case and tied 
a little pieee of ice over the end the stem goes in, and aftei 
Pa and Ma was asleep we went into the room, and I put the 
the cold muzzle of the ice revolver to Pa’s temple, and wher 



THEN I STOOD OFF AND TOLD HIM TO HOLD UP HIS HANDS. 

he woke up I told him if he moved a muscle or said a word 
r would spatter the wall and the counterpane with his brains. 
He closed his eyes and began to pray. Then I stood off 
^nd told him to hold up his hands, and tell me where 
the valuables was. He held up his hands, and sat up 
in bed, and sweat and trembled, and told us the change was 
in his left hand pants pocket, and that Ma’s money purse 




44 


peck’s bad boy. 


was in the bureau drawer in the cuff box, and my chum 
went and got them. Pa shook so the bed fairly squeaked 
and I told him I was a good notion to shoot a few holes in 
him just for fun, and he cried and said please Mr. Burglar, 
take all I have got, but spare a poor old man’s' life, who 
never did any harm! Then I told him to lay down 
on his stomach and pull the clothes over his head, 
and stick his feet over the foot board, and he did 
it, and I took a shawl strap and was strapping his feet 
together, and he was scared, I tell you. It would have 
been all right if Ma hadn’t woke up. Pa trembled so Ma 
woke up and thought he had the ager, and my chum turned 
up the light to see how much there was in Ma’s purse, and 
Ma see me, and asked me what I was doing and I told her I 
was a burglar, robbing the house. I don’t know whether 
Ma tumbled to the racket or not, but she threw a pillow at 
me, and said “get out of here or I’ll take you across my 
knee,’’ and she got up and we run. She followed us to my 
room, and took Pa’s jointed fish pole and mauled us both 
until I don’t want any more burglaring, and my chum says 
he will never speak to me again. I didn’t think Ma had so 
much sand. She is as brave as a lion, but Pa is a regular 
squaw. Pa sent for me to come to his room this morn- 
ing, but I ain’t well, and am going out to Pewaukee to 
camp out till the burglar scare is over. If Pa comes around 
here talking about war times, and how he faced the enemy 
on many a well fought field, you ask him if he ever threw 
any burglars down a banister. He is a fraud. Pa is, but Ma 
would make a good chief of police, and don’t you let it 
escape you.’’ 

And the boy took his canned ham and lobster, and tuck- 
ing some crackers inside the bosom of his blue flannel shirt, 
started for Pewaukee, while the grocer looked at him as 
though he was a hard citizen. 


CHAPTER VII. 


HIS PA GETS A BITE! 

His Pa gets too much water — The doctor’s disagree — How to spoil boys 
— His Pa goes to Pewaukee in search of his son — Anxious to fish — 
“Stopper, I’ve got a whale!”— Overboard — His Pa is saved — Goes 
to cut a switch — A dollar for his pants. 

“ So the doctor thinks your Pa has ruptured a blood 
vessel, eh,” says the street car driver to the bad boy, as the 
youngster was playing sweet on him to get a free ride down 
town. 

“Well, they don’t know. The doctor at Pewaukee said 
Pa had dropsy, until he found the water that they wrung 
out of his pants was lake water, and there was a doctor on 
the cars belonging to the Insane Asylum, when we put Pa 
on the train, who said from the looks of his face, sort of red 
and blue, it was apoplexy, but a horse doctor that was 
down at the depot when we put Pa in the carriage to take 
him home, said he was off his feed, and had been taking too 
much water when he was hot, and got foundered. O, you 
can’t tell anything about doctors. No two of ’em guesses 
alike,” answered the boy, as he turned the brake for 
the driver to stop the car for a sister of charity, 
and then punched the mule with a fish pole, when the driver 
was looking back, to see if he couldn’t jerk her off the 
back step. 

“Well, how did your Pa happen to fall out of the boat? 
Didn’t he know the lake was wet? ” 

“ He had a suspicion that it was damp, when his back 
struck the water, I think. I’ll tell you how it was. When 

45 


46 peck’s bad ‘boy. 

my chum and I run away to Pewaukee, Ma thought we had 
gone off to be piruts, and she told Pa it was a duty he owed 
to society to go and get us to come back, and be good. 
She told him if he would treat me as an equal, and laugh 
and joke with me, I wouldn’t be so bad. She said kicking 
and pounding spoiled more boys than all the Sunday 
schools. So Pa came out to our camp, about two miles up 
the lake from Pewaukee, and he was just as good natured as 
though we had never had any trouble at all. We let him 
stay all night with us, and gave him a napkin with a red 
border to sleep on under a tree, cause there was not blankefs 
enough to go around, and in the morning I let him have 
one of the soda crackers I had in my shirt bosom and he 
wanted to go fishing with us. He said he would show us 
how to fish. So he got a piece of pork rind at a farm house 
for bait, and he put it on a hook, and we got in an old boat, 
and my chum rowed and Pa and I trolled. In swinging the 
boat around Pa’s line got under the boat, and come right Up 
near me. I don’t know what possessed me, but I took hold 
of Pa’s line and gave it a “ yank,” and Pa jumped so quick 
his hat went off in the lake. “ Stoper,” says Pa, “ I’ve got a 
whale.” It’s mean in a man to call his chubby faced little 
boy a whale, but the whale yanked again and Pa began to 
pull him in. I hung on, and let the line out a little at a 
time, just zackly like a fish, and he pulled, and sweat, and 
the bald spot on his head was getting sun burnt, and the line 
cut my hand, so I wound it around the oar-lock, and Pa 
pulled hard enough to tip the boat over. He thought he had 
a forty pound musculunger, and he stood up in the boat and 
pulled on that oar-lock as hard as he could. I ought not to 
have done it, but I loosened the line from the oar-lock, and 
when it slacked up Pa went right out over the side of the 
boat, and struck on his pants, and split a hole in the water 
as big as a wash tub. His head went down under water; 


47 


peck's bad boy. 

and his boot heels hung over in the boat. “ What you doin’ ? 
Diving after the fish?” says I as Pa’s head came up and he 
blowed out the water. I thought Pa belonged to the church, 
but he said “youdamidyut.” I guess he was talking to the 
fish. Wall, sir, my chum took hold of my Pa’s foot and the 
collar of his coat, and held him in the stern of the boat, 
I and I paddled the ooat to the shore, and Pa crawled out and 

i shook himself. I never had no ijee a man’s pants could hold 

so much water. It was just like when they pull the thing 



THEN PA CRAWLED OUT AND SHOOK HIMSELF. 


on a street sprinkler. Then Pa took off his pants and my 
chum and me took hold of the legs and Pa took hold of the 
summer kitchen and we rung the water out. Pa wan’t so 
sociable after that, and he went back into the woods with his 
knife, with nothing on but a linen duster and a neck-tie, 
while his pants were drying on a tree, to cut a switch, and 
we hollered to him that a party of picnicers from Lake Side 
were coming ashore right where his pants were, to pic-nic, 
and Pa he run into the woods. He was afraid there would 


V 


X 


48 


peck’s bad boy. 


be some wimmen in the pic-nic that he knowed, and he 
coaxed us to come in the woods where he was, and he said 
he would give us a dollar apiece and not be mad any more 
if we would bring him his pants. We got his pants, and you 
ought to see how they was wrinkled when he put them on. 
They looked as though they had been ironed with waffle 
irons. We went to the depot and come home on the freight 
train, and Pa sneezed all the way in the caboose, and I don't 
think he has ruptured any blood vessel. Well, I get off here 
at Mitchell’s bank,” and the boy turned the break and jum- 
ped off without paying his fare. 


CHAPTER VIll. 


HE IS TOO HEALTHY. 

An empty champagne bottle and a black eye — He is arrested -Ocon- 

omowoc for health — His Pa is an old masher — Danced till the cov/s 

came home — The girl from the Sunny South — The bad boy is sent 

home. 

¥ 

“ There, I knew you would get into trouble,” said the 
grocery man to the bad boy, as a policeman came along 
leading him by the ear, the boy having an empty champagne 
bottle in one hand, and a black eye. “ What has he been 
doing Mr. Policeman ? ” asked the grocery man, as the 
policeman halted with the boy in front of the store. 

“Well, I was going by a house up here when this kid 
opened the door with a quart bottle of champagne, and he 
cut the wire and fired the cork at another boy, and the cham- 
pagne went all over the sidewalk, and some of it went on 
me, and I knew there was something wrong, cause cham- 
pagne is too expensive to waste that way, and he said he was 
running the shebang and if I would bring him here you 
would say he was all right. If you say so I will let him 
go.” 

The grocery man said he had better let the boy go, as 
his parents would not like to have their little pet locked up. 
So the policeman let go his ear, and he throwed the empty 
bottle on a coal wagon, and after the policeman had brushed 
the champagne off his coat, and smelled of his fingers, and 
started off, the grocery man turned to the boy', who was peel- 
ing a cucumber, and said: 

“ Now, what kind of a circus have you been haw^^, and 

. 49 ' 


what do you mean by destroying wine that way! and where 
are your folks?” 

“Well, ril tell you. Ma she has got the hay fever and 
has gone to Lake Superior to see if she can’t stop sneezing, 
and Saturday Pa said he and me would go out to Oconomo^ 
woe and stay over Sunday, and try and recuperate our 
health. Pa said it would be a good joke for me not to call 
him Pa, but to act as though I was his younger brother, and 



“IF YOU SAY sp i’ll LET HIM GO,” SAID THE POLICEMAN. 


we would have a real nice time. I knowed what he wanted. 
He is an old masher, that’s what’s the matter with him, and 
he was. going to play himself for a bachelor. O, thunder, I 
got on to his racket in a minute. He was introduced to 
some of the girls and Saturday evening he danced till the 
cows come home. At home he is awful fraid of rheumatiz, 
and he never sweats, or sits in a draft; but the water just 
poured off’n him, and he stood in the door and let a girl fan 


peck's bad boy. 


51 


him till I was afraid he would freeze, and just as he was tell- 
ing a girl from Tennessee, who was joking him about being 
a nold bach, that he was not sure as he could always hold 
out a woman hater if he was to be thrown into contact with 
the charming ladies of the Sunny South, I pulled his coat 
and said, ‘ Pa how do you spose Ma’s hay fever is to-night. 
I’ll bet she is just sneezing the top of her head off.’ Wall, 
sir, you just oughten see that girl and Pa. Pa looked at me 
as if I was a total stranger, and told the porter if that 
freckled face boot-black belonged around the house he had 
better be fired out of the ball-room, and the girl said the dis- 
gustin’ thing, and just before they fired me I told Pa he had 
better look out or he would sweat through his liver pad. 

I went to bed and Pa staid up till the lights were put out. 
He was mad when he came to bed, but he didn’t lick me, 
cause the people in the next room would hear him, but the 
next morning he talked to me. He said I might go back 
home Sunday night, and he would stay a day or two. He 
sat around on the verandah all the afternoon, talking with 
the girls, and when he would see me coming along he would 
look cross. He took a girl out boat riding, and when I 
asked him if I couldn’t go along, he said he was afraid I 
would get drowned, and he said if I went home there was 
nothing there too good for me, and so my chum and me got 
to firing bottles of champane, and he hit me in the eye with 
a cork, and I drove him out doors and was going to shell his 
earth works, when the policeman collared me. Say, what’s 
good for a black eye?” 

The grocery man told him his Pa would cure it when he 
got home. “ What do you think your Pa’s object was in 
passing himself off for a single man at Oconomowoc?” asked 
the grocery man, as he charged up the cucumber to the 
boy’s father. 

“ That’s what beats me. Aside from Ma’s hay fever she is 


52 


peck's bad boy. 


one of the healthiest women in the town. O, I suppose he 
does it for his health, the way they all do when they go to a 
summer resort, but it leaves a boy an orphan, don’t it, to 
have such kitteny parents.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


HIS PA HAS GOT ’eM AGAIN. 

Kis Pa is drinking hard — He has become a terror — A jumping dog — 

The Old Man is shamefully assaulted — “ This is a hellish climate, 

my boy!” — His Pa swears off — His Ma still sneezing at Lake 

Superior. 

“ If the dogs in our neighborhood hold out I guess I can 
do something that all the temperance societies in this town 
have failed to do,” says the bad boy to the grocery man, as 
he cut off a piece of cheese and took a handful of crackers 
out of a box. 

“Well for Heaven’s sake, what have you been doing now, 
you little reprobate,” asked the grocery man, as he went to 
the desk and charged the boy’s father with a pound and four 
ounces of cheese and two pounds of crackers. “ If you was 
my boy and played any of your tricks on me I would maul 
the everlasting life out of you. Your father is a cussed fool 
that he don’t send you to the reform school. The hired girl 
was over this morning and says your father is sick, and I 
should think he would be. What you done? Poisoned him 
I suppose.” 

“No, I didn’t poison him; I just scared the liver out of 
him, that’s all.” 

“ How was' it,” asked the groceryman, as he charged up 
a pound of prunes to the boy’s father. 

“Well, I’ll tell you, but if you ever tell Pa I wont trade 
here any more. You see. Pa belongs to all the secret socie- 
ties, and when there is a grand lodge or anything here, 
he drinks awfully. There was something last week, some 

53 


54 


peck’s bad boy. 


sort of a leather apron affair, or a sash over the shoulder, 
and every night he was out till the next day, and his breath 
smelled all the time like in front of a vinegar store, where 
they keep yeast. Ever since Ma took her hay fever with 
her up to Lake Superior, Pa has been a terror, and 
I thought something ought to be done. Since that varie- 
gated dog trick was played on him he has been pretty 
sober till Ma went away, and I happened to think of a dog 



THE DOG GAVE ONE BARK AND WENT FOR PA’S DUSTER. 


a boy in the Third Ward has got, that will do tricks. He 
will jump up and take a man’s hat off, and bring a handker- 
chief, and all that. So I got the boy to come up on our 
street, and Monday night, about dark, I got in the house and 
told the boy when Pa came along to make the dog take his 
hat, and to pin a handkerchief to Pa’s coat tail and make the 
dog take that, and then for him and the dog to light out 
for home. Well, you’d a dide. Pa came up the street as dig- 



PECK’S BAD BOY. 


55 


nified and important as though he had gone through bank- 
ruptcy, and tred to walk straight, and just as he got near 
the door the boy pointed to Pa’s hat and said, ‘ Fetch it’. 
The dog is a big Newfoundland, but he is a jumper, and 
don’t you forget it. Pa is short and thick, and when the 
dog struck him on the shoulder and took his hat Pa almost 
fell over, and then he said get out, and he kicked and backed 
up toward the step, and then turned around and the boy 
pointed to the handkerchief and said, “ fetch it,” and the 
dog gave one bark and went for it, and got hold of it and 
part of Pa’s duster, and Pa tried to climb up the steps on his 
hands and feet, and the dog pulled the other way, and it is 
an old last year’s duster anyway, and the whole back breadth 
come out, and when I opened the door there Pa stood with 
the front of his coat and the sleeves on, but the back was 
gone, and I took hold of his arm, and he said, “ Get out,” 
and was going to kick me, thinking I was a dog, and I told 
him I was his own little boy, and asked him if anything was 
the matter. “ M(hic)atter enough. New F(hic)land dog 
chawing me last hour’n a half. Why didn’t you come and 
k(hic)ill ’em?” I told Pa there was no dog at all, and he 
must be careful of his health or I wouldn’t have no Pa at all. 
He looked at me and asked me, as he felt for the place 
where the back of his linen duster was, what had become of 
his coattail and hat if there was no dog, and I told him he 
had probably caught his coat on that barbed wire fence down 
street, and he said he saw the dog and a boy just as plain as 
could be, and for me to help him up stairs and go for 
the doctor. I got him in the bed, and he said, ‘‘this ie a 
hellish climate, my boy,” and I went for the doctor. Pa said 
he wanted to be cauterised, so he wouldn’t go mad. I 
told the doc. the joke, and he said he would keep it up, and 
he gave Pa some powders, and told him if he drank any 
more before Christmas he was a dead man. Pa says it has 


56 


peck’s bad boy. 


learned him a lesson and they can never get any more pizen 
down him, but don’t you give me away, will you, cause he 
would go and complain to the police about the dog, and 
they would shoot it. Ma will be back as soon as she gets 
through sneezing, and I will tell her, and she will give me a 
chromo, cause she don’t like to have Pa drink only between 
meals. Well, good day. There’s an Italian got a bear that 
performs in the street, and I am going to find where he is 
showing, and feed the bear a cayenne pepper lozenger, and 
see him clean out the Polack settlement. Goodbye.” And 
the boy went to look for the bear. 


CHAPTER X. 


HIS PA HAS GOT RELIGION. 

The bad boy goes to Sunday school — Promises reformation — The Old 
Man on trial for six months — What Ma thinks — Ants in Pa’s liver- 
pad — The Old Man in church — Religion is one thing — Ants another. 

“ Well, that beats the devil,” said the grocery man, as he 
stood in front of his grocery and saw the bad boy coming 
along on the way home from Sunday school, with a clean 
shirt on, and a testament and some dime novels under his 
arm. “ What has got into you, and what has come over your 
Pa. I see he has braced up, and looks pale and solemn. 
You haven’t converted him, have you?” 

“ No, Pa has not got religion enough to hurt yet, but he has 
got the symptons. He has joined the church on probation, 
and is trying to be good so he can get in the church for 
keeps He said it was hell living the way he did, and he has 
got me to promise to go to Sunday school. He said if 
I didn’t he would maul me so my skin wouldn’t hold water. 
You see, Ma said Pa had got to be on trial for six months 
before he could get in the church, and if he could get along 
without swearing and doing anything bad, he was all right, 
and we must try him and see if we could cause him to 
swear. She said she thought a person, when they was on 
probation, ought to be a martyr, and try and overcome all 
temptations to do evil, and if Pa could go through six months 
of our home life, and not cuss the hinges off the door, he was 
sure of a glorious immortality beyond the grave. She said 
it wouldn’t be wrong for me to continue to play innocent 
jokes on Pa, and if he took it all right he was a Christian, 

57 


58 


peck’s bad boy. 


but if he got a hot box, and flew around mad, he was better 
out of church than in it. There he comes now, ” said the 
boy as he got behind a sign, “ and he is pretty hot for a 
Christian. He is looking for me. You had ought to have 
seen him in church this morning. You see, I commenced 
the exercises at home after breakfast by putting a piece of 
ice in each of Pa’s boots, and when he pulled on the boots 
he yelled that his feet were all on fire, and we told him that 
it was nothing but symptoms of gout, so he left the ice in 
his boots to melt, and he said all the morning that he felt as 
though he had sweat his boots full. But that was not the 
worst. You know, Pa he wears a liver-pad. Well, on Sat- 
urday my chum and me was out on the lake shore and we 
found a nest of ants, these little red ants, and I got a pop 
bottle half full of the ants and took them home. I didn’t 
know what I would do with the ants, but ants are always 
handy to have in the house. This morning, when Pa was 
dressing for church, I saw his liver-pad on a chair, and 
noticed a hole in it, and I thought what a good place it 
would be for the ants. I don’t know what possessed me, 
but I took the liver-pad into my room, and opened the bot- 
tle, and put the hole over the mouth of the bottle and 
I guess the ants thought there was something to eat in the 
liver-pad, cause they all went into it, and they crawled 
around in the bran and condition powders inside of it, and I 
took it back to Pa, and he put it on under his shirt, and 
dressed himself, and we went to church. Pa squirmed a lit- 
tle when the minister was praying, and I guess some of the 
ants had come out to view the landscape o’er. When we got 
up to sing the hymn Pa kept kicking, as though he was 
nervous, and he felt down his neck and looked sort of wild, 
the way he did when he had the jim-jams. When we sat 
down Pa couldn’t keep still, and I like to dide when I saw 
some of the ants come out of his shirt bosom and go racing 


peck’s bad boy. 


59 


around his white vest. Pa tried to look pious and resigned, 
but he couldn’t keep his legs still, and he sweat mor’n a pail 
full. When the minister preached about ‘ the worm that 
never dieth,’ Pa reached into his vest and scratched his ribs, 
and he looked as though he would give ten dollars if the min- 
ister would get through. Ma she looked at Pa as though 
she would bite his head off, but Pa he just squirmed, and 
acted as though his soul was on fire. Say, does ants bite, or 



THE LIVER PAD WAS ON THE FLOOR AND PA STAMPING ON IT. 


just crawl around? Well, when the minister said amen, and 
prayed the second round, and then said a brother who was a 
missionary to the heathen would like to make a few remarks 
about the work of the missionaries in Bengal, and take up a 
collection, Pa told Ma they would have to excuse him, and 
he lit out for home, slapping himself on the legs and on the 
arms and on the back, and he acted crazy. Ma and me went 
home, after the heathen got through, and found Pa in his 
bed room, with part of his clothes off, and the liver-pad was 


6o 


peck’s bad boy. 


on the floor, and Pa was stamping on it with his boots, and 
talking offul. 

“What is the matter,” says Ma. “Don’t your religion 
agree with you ? ” 

“Religion be dashed,” says Pa, as he kicked the liver- 
pad. “ I would give ten dollars to know how a pint of red 
ants got into my liver-pad. Religion is one thing, and a 
million ants walking all over a man, playing tag, is another, 
I didn’t know the liver-pad was loaded. How in Gehenna did 
they get in there?” and Pa scowled at Ma as though he 
would kill her. 

“ Don’t swear, dear,” says Ma, as she threw down her 
nymn book, and took off her bonnet. “You should be 
patient. Remember Job was patient and he was afflicted with 
sore boils.” 

“ I don’t care,” says Pa, as he chased the ants out of his 
drawers, “Job never had ants in his liver-pad. If he had he 
would have swore the shingles off a barn. Here you,” says 
Pa, speaking to me, “you head off them ants running under 
the bureau. If the truth was known I believe you would be 
responsible for this outrage.” And Pa looked at me kind of 
hard. 

“ O, Pa,” says I, with tears in my eyes. “ Do you think 
your little Sunday school boy would catch ants in a pop bot- 
tle on the lake shore, and bring them home, and put them in 
the hole of your liver-pad, just before you put it on to go to 
church? You are to bad.’’ And I shed some tears. I can 
shed tears now any time I want to, but it didn’t do any good 
this time. Pa knew it was me, and while he was looking for 
the shawl strap I went to Sunday school, and now I guess he is 
after me, and I will go and take a walk down to Bay View. 

The boy moved off as his Pa turned a corner, and the 
grocery man said, “ Well, that boy beats all I ever saw. If he 
was mine I would give him away.” 


CHAPTER XI. 


HIS PA TAKES A TRICK. 

Jamaica rum and cards — The bad boy possessed of a devil — The kind 
deacon — At prayer meeting — The Old Man tells his experience — 
The flying cards — The prayer meeting suddenly closed. 

“What is it I hear about your Pa being turned out of 
prayer meeting Wednesday night,” asked the grocer of the 
bad boy, as he came over after some canteloupes for break- 
fast, and plugged a couple to see if they were ripe. 

“ He wasn’t turned out of prayer meeting at all. The 
people all went away and Pa and me was the last ones out 
of the church. But Pa was mad, and don’t you forget it.” 

“ Well, what seemed to be the trouble? Has your Pa be- 
come a backslider?” 

“ O, no, his flag is still there. But something seems to go 
wrong. You see, when we got ready to go to prayer meeting 
last night. Pa told me to go up stairs and get him a handker- 
chief, and to drop a little perfumery on it, and put it in the 
tail pocket of his black coat. I did it, but I guess I got 
hold of the wrong bottle of fumery. There was a label on 
the fumery bottle that said ‘Jamaica Rum,’ and I thought it 
was the same as Bay Rum, and I put on a whole lot. Just 
afore I put the handkerchief in Pa’s pocket, I noticed a pack 
of cards on the stand, that Pa used to play hi-lo-jack with 
Ma evenings when he was so sick he couldn’t go down town, 
before he got 'ligion, and I wrapped the handkercher around 
the pack of cards and put them in his pocket. I don’t 
know what made me do it, and Pa don’t, either, I guess, 
cause he told Ma this morning I was possessed of a devil. 

61 


62 


peck’s bad boy. 


I never owned no devil, but I had a pair of pet goats onct, 
and they played hell all around, Pa said. That’s what the 
devil does, ain’t it? Well, I must go home with these mel- 
ons, or they won’t keep.” 

“ But hold on,” says the grocery man as he gave the boy 
a few raisins with worms in, that he couldn’t sell, to keep 
him, “ what about the prayer meeting?” 

“ O, I like to forgot.” Well, Pa and me went to prayer 
meeting, and Ma came along afterwards with a deakin that 
is mashed on her, I guess, ’cause he says she is to be pitted 
for havin’ to go through life yoked to such an old prize ox 
as Pa. I heard him tell Ma that, when he was helping her 
put on her rubber waterprivilege to go home in the rain the 
night of the sociable, and she looked at him just as she does 
at me when she wants me to go down to the hair foundry 
after her switch, and said, ‘ O, you dear brother,’ and all the 
way home he kept her waterprivilege on by putting his arm 
on the small of her back. Ma asked Pa if he didn’t think 
the deakin was real kind, and Pa said, ‘ yez, dam kind,’ but 
that was afore he got ’ligion. We sat in a pew, at the 
prayer meeting, next to Ma and the deakin, and there was 
lots of pious folks all around there. After the preacher had 
gone to bat, and an old lady had her innings, a praying, and 
the singers had gone out on first base. Pa was on deck, and 
the preacher said they would like to hear from the recent 
convert, who was trying to walk in the straight and narrow 
way, but who found it so hard, owing to the many crosses he 
had to bear. Pa knowed it was him that had to go to bat, 
and he got up and said he felt it was good to be there. He 
said he didn’t feel that he was a full sized Christian yet, but 
he was getting in his work the best he could. He said at 
times everything looked dark to him, and he feared he should 
falter by the wayside, but by a firm resolve he kept his eye 
sot on the future, and if he was tempted to do wrong he said 


peck’s bad boy. 


63 


get thee behind me, Satan, and stuck in his toe-nails for a 
pull for the right. He said he was thankful to the brothers 
and sisters, particularly the sisters, for all they had done to 
make his burden light, and hoped to meet them all in — . 
When Pa got as far as that he sort of broke down. I spose 



he was going to say heaven, though after a few minutes 
they all thought he wanted to meet them in a saloon. When 
his eyes began to leak. Pa put his hand in his tail pocket for 
his handkercher, and got hold of it, and gave it a jerk, and 


64 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


out came the handkercher, and the cards. Well, if he had 
shuffled them, and Ma had cut them, and he had dealt six 
hands, they couldn’t have been dealt any better. They flew 
into everybody’s lap. The deakin that was with Ma got the 
jack of spades and three aces and a deuce, and Ma got some 
nine spots and a king of hearts, and Ma nearly fainted, cause 
she didn’t get a better hand, I spose. The preacher got a 
pair of deuces, and a queen of hearts, and he looked up at 
Pa as though it was a misdeal, and a old woman who sat 
across the aisle, she only got two cards, but that was enough. 
Pa didn’t see what he done at first, cause he had the hand- 
kerchief over his eyes, but when he smelt the rum on it, he 
took it away, and when he saw everybody discarding, and he 
thought he had struck a poker game, and he looked around 
as though he was mad cause they didn’t deal him a hand. 
The minis'ter adjourned the prayer meeting and whispered to 
Pa, and everybody went out holding their noses on account 
of Pa’s fumery, and when Pa came home he asked Ma what 
he should do to be saved. Ma said she didn’t know. The 
deakin told her Pa seemed wedded to his idols; Pa said the 
deakin better run his own idols, and Pa would run his. I 
don’t know how it is going to turn out, but Pa says he is 
going to stick to the church. 


CHAPTER XII. 


HIS PA GETS PULLED. 

The Old Man studies the Bible — Daniel in the lion’s den — The mule and 
the mule’s father — Murder in the Third Ward — The Old Man 
arrested — The Old Man fans the dust out of his son’s pants. 

“What was you and your Ma down to the police station 
for so late last night?” asked the grocery man of the bad 
boy, as he kicked a dog away from a basket of peaches 
standing on the sidewalk. “Your Ma seemed to be much 
affected.” 

“ That’s a family secret. But if you will give me some of 
those rotten peaches I will tell you, if you won’t ever ask Pa 
how he came to be pulled by the police.” 

The grocery man told him to help himself out of the bas- 
ket that the dog had been smelling of, and he filled his 
pockets, and the bosom of his flannel shirt, and his hat, and 
said: 

“Well, you know Pa is studying up on the Bible, and he 
is trying to get me interested, and he wants me to ask him 
questions, but if I ask him any questions that he can’t answer 
he gets mad. When I asked him about Daniel in the den of 
lions, and if he didn’t think Dan was traveling with a show, '' 
and had the lions cloroformed, he said I was a scoffer, and 
would go to Gehenna. Now I don’t want to go to Gehenna 
just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old 
times, do you ? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws 
of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and 
had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes 
into the lions’ den in Coup’s circus did because I saw him in 


66 


peck’s bad boy. 


the dressing room, when me an my chum got in for carry- 
ing water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl 
in tights who was going to ride two horses. Pa said I was 
mistaken, cause they never prayed in circus, ’cept the lem- 
onade butchers. I guess I know when I hear a man pray. 
Coup’s Daniel talked just like a deacon at class meeting, and 
told the girl to go to the place where the minister says we 
will all go if we don’t do different. Pa says it is wicked to 



speak of Daniel in the same breath that you speak of a cir- 
cus, so I am wicked I ’spose. Well, I couldn’t help it and 
when he wanted me to ask him questions about Elijah going 
up in a chariot of fire, I asked him if he believed a chariot 
like the ones in the circus, with eight horses, could carry a 
man right up to the clouds, and Pa said of course it could. 


peck’s bad boy. 


67 


Then I asked him what they did with the horses after they 
got up there, or if the chariot kept running back and forth 
like a bust to a pic-nic, and whether they had stalls for the 
horses and harness-makers to repair harnesses, and wagon- 
makers, cause a chariot is liable to run off a wheel, if it 
strikes a cloud in turning a corner. Pa said I made him tired. 
He said I had no more conception of the beauties of scrip- 
ture than a mule, and then I told Pa he couldn’t expect a 
mule to know much unless the mule’s father had brought 
him up right, and where a mule’s father had been a regular 
old bummer till he got the jim-jams, and only got religion 
to keep out of the inebriate asylum, that the little mule was 
entitled to more charity for his shortcomings than the mule’s 
Papa. That seemed to make Pa mad, and he said the scrip- 
ture lessons would be continued some other time, and I 
might go out and play, and if I wasn’t in before nine o’clock 
he would come after me and warm my jacket. Well, I was 
out playing, and me and my chum heard of the murder in 
the Third Ward, and went down there to see the dead and 
wounded, and it was after ten o’clock, and Pa was searching 
for me, and I saw Pa go into an alley, in his shirt sleeves and 
no hat on, and the police were looking for the murderer, 
and I told the policeman there was a suspicious looking 
man in the alley, and the policeman went in there and 
jumped on his back, and held him down, and the patrol 
wagon came, and they loaded Pa in, and he gnashed his 
teeth, and said they would pay dearly for this, and they held 
his hands and told him not to talk, as he would commit him* 
self, and they tore off his suspender buttons, and I went home 
and told Ma the police had pulled Pa for being in a suspicious 
place, and she said she had always been afraid he would 
come to some bad end, and we went down to the station and 
the police let Pa go on promise that he wouldn’t do so again, 
and we went home and Pa fanned the dust out of my pants. 


68 


peck's bad BOV. 


But he did it in a pious manner, and I can’t complain. He 
was trying to explain to Ma how it was that he was pulled, 
when I came away, and I guess he will make out to square 
himself. Say, don’t these peaches seem to have a darn 
queer taste? Well, good bye, I am going down to the mor- 
gue to have some fun.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


HIS PA GOES TO T^E EXPOSITION. 

The bad boy acts as guide — The circus story — The Old Man wants to 
sit down — Tries to eat pancakes — Drinks some mineral water — The 
Old Man falls in love with a wax woman — A policeman interferes — 
The lights go out — The grocery-man don’t want a clerk. 

“ Well, everything seems to be quiet over to your house 
this week,” says the grocery man to the bad boy as the 
youth was putting his thumb into some peaches through the 
mosquito netting over the baskets, to see if they were soft 
enough to steal, “ I suppose you have let up on the old man, 
haven’t you?” 

“ O, no. We keep it right up. The minister of the 
church that Pa has joined says while Pa is on probation it 
is perfectly proper for us to do everything to try him, and 
make him fall from grace. The minister says if Pa comes 
out of his six months probation without falling by the 
wayside he has got the elements to make the boss Christian, 
and Ma and me are. doing all we can.” 

” What was the doctor at your house for this morning ? ” 
asked the groceryman. “ Is your Ma sick ? ” 

” No, Ma is worth two in the bush. It’s Pa that ain’t 
well. He is having some trouble with his digestion. You 
see he went to the exposition with me as guide, and that is 
enough to ruin any man’s digestion. Pa is near-sighted, and 
said he wanted me to go along and show him things. Well, I 
never had so much fun since Pa fell out of the boat. First 
we \Vent in by the fountain, and Pa had never been in the 
exposition building before. Last year he was in Yourip, and 

69 


70 


peck’s bad boy. 


he was astonished at the magnitude of everything. First I 
made him jump clear across the aisle there, where the stuffed 
tigers are, by the fur place. I told him the keeper was just 
coming along with some meat to feed the animals, and when 
they smelled the meat, they just clawed things. He run 
against a show-case, and then wanted to go away. 

He said he traveled with a circus when he was young, 
and nobody knew the dangers of fooling around wild anim- 
als better than he did. He said once he fought with seven 
tigers and two Nubian lions for five hours, with Mabee’s old 
show. I asked him if that was afore he got religion, and he 
said never you mind. He is an old liar, even if he is con- 
verted. Ma says he never was with a circus, and she has 
known him ever since he wore short dresses. Wall, you 
would a dide to see Pa there by the furniture place, where 
they have got beautiful beds and chairs. There was one blue 
chair under a glass c^se, all velvet, and a sign was over it, 
telling people to keep their hands off. Pa asked me what 
the sign was, and I told him it said ladies and gentleman 
are requested to sit in the chairs and try them. Pa climbed 
over the railing and was just going to sit down on the glass 
show-case over the chair, when one of the walk-around fel- 
lows, with imitation police hats, took him by the collar and 
yanked him back over the railing, and was going to kick 
Pa’s pants. Pa was mad to have his coat collar pulled up 
over his head, and have the set of his coat spoiled, and was 
going to sass the man, when I told Pa the man was a lunatic 
from the asylum, that was on exhibition, and Pa wanted to 
go away from there. He said he didn’t know what they 
wanted to exhibit lunatics for. We went up stairs to the 
pancake bazar, where they broil pancakes out of self rising 
flour, and put butter and sugar on them and give them away. 
Pa said he could eat more pancakes than any man out of 
jail; and wanted me to get him some. I took a couple of 


peck’s bad boy. 


71 


pancakes and tore out a piece of the lining of my coat and 
put it between the pancakes and handed them to Pa, with a 
paper around the pancakes. Pa didn’t notice the paper nor 
the cloth, and it would have made you laff to see him chew 
on them. I told him I guessed he didn’t have as good teeth 
as he used to, and he said never you mind the teeth, and he 
kept on until he swallowed the whole business, and he 
said he guessed he didn’t want any more. He is so sensi- 
tive about his teeth that he would eat a leather apron if 
anybody told him he couldn’t. When the Doctor said Pa’s 
digestion was bad, I told him if he could let Pa swallow a 
seamstress or a sewing machine, to sew up the cloth, he 
would get well, and the doc. says I am going to be the death 
of Pa some day. But I thought I should split when Pa wanted 
a drink of water. I asked him if he would drutherhave min- 
eral water, and he said he guessed it would take the stron- 
gest kind of mineral water to wash down them pancakes, so 
I took him to where the fire extinguishers are, and got him 
to take the nozzle of the exstinguisher in his mouth, and I 
turned the faucet. I don’t think he got more than a quart 
of the stuff out of the saleratus machine down him, but he 
rared right up and said he be condamed if he believed that 
water was ever intended to drink, and he felt as though he 
should bust, and just then the man who kicks the big organ 
struck up and the building shook, and I guess Pa thought he 
had busted. The most fun was when we came along to 
where the wax woman is. They have got a wax woman 
dressed up to kill, and she looks just as natural as if she 
could breathe. She had a handkerchief in her hand, and as 
we came along I told Pa there was a lady that seemed to 
know him. Pa is on the mash himself, and he looked at her 
and smiled and said good evening and asked me who she 
was. 

I told him it looked to me like the girl that sings in the 


72 


peck’s bad BOV. 


choir at our church, and Pa said course it is, and he went 
right in where she was and said “pretty good show, isn’t it,” 
and put out his hand to shake hands with her, but the woman 
who tends the stand came along and thought Pa was drunk 
and said “old gentleman I guess you had better get out 
of here. This is for ladies only.” 

Pa said he didn’t care nothing for her ladies only, all he 



THIS IS FOR LADIES ONLY. 


wanted was to converse with an acquaintance, and then 
one of the policemen came along and told Pa he had better 
go down to the saloon where he belonged. Pa excused him- 
self to the wax woman, and said he would see her later, and 
told the policeman if he would come out to the sidewalk he 
would knock leven kinds of stuffing out of him. The 
policeman told him that would be all right, and I led Pa 
away. He was offul mad. But it was the best fun when the 
lights went out. You see this electric light machine slipped 


peck’s bad boy. 


73 


a cog or lost its cud and all of a sudden the 
lights went out and it was as dark as a squaw’s 
pocket. Pa wanted to know what made it so dark, 
and I told him it was not dark. He said boy don’t you fool 
me. You see I thought it would be fun to make Pa believe 
he was struck blind, so I told him his eyes must be wrong. 
He said, do you mean to say you can see, and I told him 
everything was as plain as day, and I pointed out the differ- 
ent things, and explained them and walked Pa along, and 
acted just as though I could see, and Pa said it had come at 
last. He had felt for years as though he would some day 
lose his eyesight and now it had come and he said he laid 
it all to the condamned mineral water. After a little they 
lit some of the gas burners, and Pa said he could see a little, 
and wanted to go home, and I took him home. When we 
got out of the building he began to see things, and 
said his eyes were coming around all right. Pa is the eas- 
iest man to fool ever I saw.” 

“Well, I should think he would kill you,” said the groc- 
eryman. “ Don’t he ever catch on, and find out you 
have deceived him ? ” ♦ 

“ O, sometimes. But about nine times in ten I can get 
away with him. Say, don’t you want to hire me for a 
clerk ? ” ^ 

The grocery man said that he had rather have a spotted 
hyena, and the boy stole a melon and went away. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


HIS PA CATCHES ON. 

Two days and nights in the bath room — 'Religion cakes the old man’s 
breast — The bad boy’s chum— Dressed up as a girl — The old man 
deluded — The couple start for the court house park — His Ma ap- 
pears on the scene — “ If you love me kiss me” — Ma to the rescue — 
“ I am dead, am I ? ” — His Pa throws a chair through the transom. 

“Where have you oeen for a week back,” asked the 
grocery man of the bad boy, as the boy pulled the tail board 
out of the delivery wagon accidentally and let a couple of 
bushels of potatoes roll out into the gutter. “ I haven’t seen 
you around here, and you look pale. You haven’t been 
sick, have you ?” 

“ No, I have not been sick. Pa locked me up in the bath 
room for two days and two nights, and didn’t give me noth- 
ing to eat but bread and water. Since he has got religious 
he seems to be harder than ever on me. Say, do you think 
religion softens a man’s heart, or does it give him a caked 
breast ? I ’spect Pa will burn me at the stake next.” 

The grocery man said that when a man had truly been 
converted his heart was softened, and he was always looking 
for a chance to do good and be kind to the poor, but if he 
only had this galvanized religion, this roll plate piety, or 
whitewashed reformation, he was liable to be a harder citizen 
than before. “ What made your Pa lock you up in the bath- 
room on bread and water ? ” he asked. 

“ Well,” says the boy, as he eat a couple of salt pickles 
out of a jar on the sidewalk, “Pa is not converted enough to 
hurt him, and I knowed it, and I thought it would be a good 

74 


peck's bad boy. 


75 


joke to try him and see if he was so confounded good, so I 
got my chum to dress up in asuitof hissister’ssummer clothes. 
Well, you wouldn’t believe my chum would look so much 
like a girl. He would fool the oldest inhabitant. You know 
how fat he is. He had to sell his bicycle to a slim fellow 
that clerks in a store, cause he didn’t want it any more. His 
neck is just as fat and there are dimples in it, and with a 
dress low in the neck, and long at the trail he looks as tall as 
my Ma. He busted one of his sisters slipper’s getting them 
on, and her stockings were a good deal too big for him, but he 
tucked his drawers down in them and tied a suspender 
around his leg above the knee, and they stayed on all right. 
Well, he looked killin’, I should prevaricate, with his sister’s 
muslin dress on, starched as stiff as a shirt, and her recep- 
tion hat with a white feather as big as a Newfoundland dog’s 
tail. Pa said he had to go down town to see some 
of the old soldiers of his regiment, and I 
loafed along behind. My chum met Pa on the corner and 
asked him where the Lake Shore Park was. “ She ” said 
she was a stranger from Chicago, that her husband had de- 
serted her and she didn’t know but she would jump into the 
lake. Pa looked into my chum’s eye and sized her up, and 
said it would be a shame to commit suicide, and asked if she 
didn’t want to take a walk. My chum said he should titter, 
and he took Pa’s arm and they walked up to the lake and 
back. Well, you may talk about joining the church on pro- 
bation all you please, but they get their arm around a girl all 
the same. Pa hugged my chum till he says he thought Pa 
would break his sister’s corset all to pieces, and he squeezed 
my chum’s hand till the ring cut right into his finger and he 
has to wear a piece of court plaster on it. They started for 
the Court House park, as I told my chum to do, and I went 
and got Ma. It was about time for the soldiers to go 
to the exposition for the evening bizness, and I told Ma we 


76 


peck’s bad boy. 


could go down and see them go by. Ma just throwed a 
shawl ovef her head and we started down through the park. 
When we got near Pa and my chum I told Ma it was a 
shame for so many people to be sitting around lally-gagging 

right before folks, and 
she said it was dis- 
gustin’, and then I 
pointed to my chum 
who had his head on 
Pa’s bosom, and Pa 
was patting my chum 
on the cheek, while 
he held his other arm 
around his waist. 
They was on the iron 
seat, and we came 
right up behind them 
and when Ma saw Pa’s 
bald head I thought 
she would bust. She 
knew his head as 
quick as she sot eyes 
on it. My chum 
asked Pa if he was 
married, and he said 
he was a widower. 
He said his wife died 
fourteen years ago, of liver complaint. 
Well, Ma shook like a leaf, and I 
could hear her new teeth rattle just 
“MA couldn’t stand IT like chewing strawberries with sand 
ANY longer. them. Then my chum put his 

arms around Pa’s neck and said, “If you love me kiss 
me in the mouth.” Pa was just leaning down to kiss 



PfiCK^S BAD BOY. 


11 


my chum when Ma couldn’t stand it any longer, and she 
went right around in front of them, and she grabbed my 
chum by the hair and it all came off, hat and all, and my 
chum Jumped up and Ma scratched him in the face, and my 
chum tried to get his hands in his pants pockets to get his 
handkerchief to wipe off the blood on his nose, and Ma she 
turned on Pa and he turned pale, and then she was going 
for my chum again when he said, “O let up on a feller,” and 
he see she was mad and he grabbed the hat and hair off the 
gravel walk and took the skirt of his sister’s dress in his hand 
and lifted out for home on a gallop, and Ma took Pa by the 
elbow and said, “You are a nice old party ain’t you? I am 
dead, am I? Died of liver complaint fourteen years ago, 
did I? You will find an animated corpse on your hands. 
Around kissing spry women out in the night, sir.” When 
they started home Pa seemed to be as weak as a cat, and 
couldn’t say a word, and I asked him if I could go to the 
exposition, and they said I could. I don’t know what 
happened after they got home, but Pa was setting 
up for me when I got back and he wanted to 
know what I brought Ma down there for, and how I knew 
he was there. 

I thought it would help Pa out of the scrape and so I told 
him it was not a girl he was hugging at all, but it was my 
chum, and he laughed at first, and told Ma it was not a girl 
but Ma said she knew a darn sight better. She guessed she 
could tell a girl. 

Then Pa was mad and he said I was at the bottom of the 
whole bizness, and he locked me up, and said I was enough 
to paralyze a saint. I told him through the key-hole that a 
saint that had any sense ought to tell a boy from a girl, and 
then he throwed a chair at me through the transom. The 
worst of the whole thing is my chum is mad at me cause 
Ma scratched him, and he says that lets him out. He don’t 


78 


peck’s bad boy. 


go into any more schemes with me. Well, I must be going. 
Pa is going to have my measure taken for a raw hide, he 
says, and I have got to stay at home from the sparring match 
and learn my Sunday school lesson. 


CHAPTER XV. 


HIS PA AT THE RE-UNION. 

I he old man in military splendor — Tells how he mowed down the 
rebels — “I and Grant”— What is a sutler? — Ten dollars for 
pickles! — “Let us hang him!” — The old man on a run — He 
stands up to supper — The bad boy i>s to die at sunset. 

“ I SAW your Pa wearing a red, white, and blue badge, and 
a round red badge, and several other badges, last week, dur- 
ing the re-union,” said the groc ery man to the bad boy, as the 
youth asked for a piece of codfish skin to settle coffee with 
“ He looked like a hero, with his old black hat, with a gold 
cord around it.” 

“ Yes, he wore all the badges he could get, the first day, 
but after he blundered into a place where there were a lot of 
fellows from his own regiment, he took off the badges, and 
he wasn’t very numerous around the boys the rest of the week. 
But he was lightning on the sham battle,” says the boy. 

“What vvas the .matter? Didn’t the soldiers treat him 
well? Didn’t they seem to yearn for his society? ” asked 
the grocery man, as the boy was making a lunch on some 
sweet crackers in a tin canister 

“Well, they were not very much mashed on Pa. You see. 
Pa never gets tired telling us about how he fit in the army. 
For several years I didn’t know what a sutler was, and when 
Pa would tell about taking a musket that a dead soldier had 
dropped, and . going into the thickest of the fight, and fairly 
mowing down the rebels in swaths, the way they cut hay, I 
thought he was the greatest man that ever was. Until I was 
eleven years old I thought Pa killed men enough to fill the, 

79 


8o 


PECK^S BAD BOY. 


Forest Home cemetery. I thought a sutler was something 
higher than a general, and Pa used to talk about “ I 
and Grant,” and what Sheridan told him, and how Sherman 
marched with him to the sea, and all that kind of rot, until I 

wondered why they 
didn’t have pictures 
of Pa on a white 
horse, with epaulets 
on, and a sword. 
One day at school I 
told a boy that my 
Pa killed more men 
than Grant, and the 
boy said he didn’t 
doubt it, but he 
killed them with 
commissary whisky. The boy 
said his Pa was in the same regi- 
ment that my Pa was a sutler of, 
and his Pa said my Pa charged 
him five dollars for a canteen of 
pepper sauce and alcohol and 
called it whisky. Then I began 

to enquire into it, and found out 
that a sutler was a sort of liquid 
peanut stand, and that his rank in 
the army was about the same as a chest- 
nut roaster on the sidewalk here at 
home. It made me sick, and I never 
had the same respect for Pa after that. Bu^ 
Pa don’t care. He thinks he is a hero, and 
STARTED AFTER tried to get a pension on account or losing 
PA WITH SABRE ^ piece of his thumb, but when the officers 

DRAWN, ^ 



peck’s bad BOV. 


8i 


found he was wounded by the explosion of a can of baked 
beans they couldn’t give it to him. Pa was down town 
when the veterans were here, and I was with him, and I saw 
a lot of old soldiers looking at Pa, and I told him they acted 
as though they knew him, and he put on his glasses, and 
said to one of them, “How are you Bill?” The soldier 
looked at Pa and called the other soldiers, and one said, 
‘That s the old duffer that sold me the bottle of brandy 
peaches at Chickamauga for three dollars, and they eat a 
hole through my stummick.* Another said, ‘He’s the cuss 
that took ten dollars out of my pay for pickles that were 
put up in aqua fortis. Look the corps badges he has on.’ 
Another said, ‘The old whelp! He charged me fifty cents 
a pound for onions when I had the scurvy at Atlanta.’ 
Another said, ‘ He beat me out of my wages playing draw 
poker with a cold deck, and the aces up his sleeve. Let us 
hang him.’ By this time Pa’s nerves got unstrung and 
began to hurt him, and he said he wanted to go home, and 
when we got around the corner he tore off his badges and 
threw them in the sewer, and said it was all a man’s life was 
worth to be a veteran nowadays. He didn’t go down town 
again till next day, and when he heard a band playing he 
would go around a block. But at the sham battle where 
there were no veterans hardly, he was all right with the 
militia boys, and told them how he did when he was in the 
army. I thought it would be fun to see Pa run, and so 
when one of the cavalry fellows lost his cap in the charge, 
and was looking for it, I told the dragoon that the pussy 
old man over by the fence had stolen his cap. That was 
Pa. Then I told Pa that the soldier on the horse said he 
was a rebel, and he was going to kill him. The soldier 
started after Pa with his sabre drawn, and Pa started to run, 
and it was funny, you bet. The soldier galloped his horse,, 
and yelled, and Pa put in his best licks, and run up to the track 


82 


peck’s bad boy. 


to where there was a board off the fence, and tried to get 
through, but he got stuck, and the soldier put the point of 
his sabre on Pa’s pants and pushed, and Pa got through the 
fence and I guess he ran all the way home. At supper time 
Pa would not come to the table, but stood up and ate off the 
sideboard, and Ma said Pa’s shirt was all bloody, and Pa 
said mor’n fifty of them cavalry men charged on him, and 
he held them at bay as long as he could, and then retired in 
good order. This morning a boy told him that I set the 
cavalry man onto him, and he made me wear two mouse traps 
on my ears all the forenoon, and he says he will kill me at 
sunset. I ain’t going to be there at sunset, 
and don’t you remember about it. Well, good bye. I 
have got to go down to the morgue and see them bring in 
the man that was found on the lake shore, and see if the 
morgue keeper is drunk this time.” 


CHAPTER XVL 


THE BAD BOY IN LOVE. 

Are you a Christian? — No getting to Heaven on small potatoes! — The 
bad boy has to chew cobs — Ma says its good for a boy to be in love 
— Love weakens the bad boy — How much does it cost to get mar- 
ried? — Mad dog! — Never eat ice cream. 

“Are you a Christian?” asked the bad 6oyof the grocery 
man, as that gentleman was placing vegetables out in front 
of the grocery one morning. 

“ Well, I hope so,” answered the grocery man, “ I try to 
do what is right, and hope to wear the golden crown when 
the time comes to close my books.” 

“Then how is it that you put out a box of great big sweet 
potatoes, and when we order some, and they come to the 
table, they are little bits of things, not bigger than a radish? 
Do you expect to get to heaven on such small potatoes, 
when you use big ones for a sign?” asked the boy, as he 
took out a silk handkerchief and brushed a speck of dust 
off his nicely blacked shoes. 

The grocery man blushed and said he did not mean to 
take any such advantage of his customers. He said it m.ust 
have been a mistake of the boy that delivers groceries. 

“ Then you must hire the boy to make mistakes, for it has 
been so every time we have had sweet potatoes for five 
years, ”said the boy. “And about green corn. You have a few 
ears stripped down to show how nice and plump it is, and if 
we order a dozen ears there are only two that have got any 
corn on at all, and Pa and Ma gets them, and the rest of us 


have to chew cobs. Do you hope to wear a crown of glory 
on that kind of corn?” 

“O, such things will happen,” said the grocery man with 
a laugh. ” But don’t let’s talk about heaven. Let’s talk 
^ about the other place. .How’s things over to your house? 
And say, what’s the matter with you. You are all dressed 
up, and have got a clean shirt on, and your shoes blacked, 
and I notice your pants are not raveled out so at the bot- 
toms of the legs behind. You are not in love are you ?” 

“Well, I should smile,” said the boy, as he looked in a 
small mirror on the counter, covered with fly specks. “A 
girl got mashed on me, and Ma says it is good for a boy who 
has’nt got no sister, to be in love with a girl, and so 1 kind 
of tumbled to myself and she don’t go nowhere without I 
go with her. I take her to dancing school, and everywhere, 
and she loves me like a house afire. Say, was you ever in 
love ? Makes a fellow feel queer, don’t it ? Well sir, the 
first time I went home with her I put my arm around her, and 
honest it scared me. It was just like when you take hold of 
the handles of an electric battery, and you can’t let go till the 
man turns the knob. Honest, I was just as weak as a cat. 
I thought she had needles in her belt and was going to take 
my arm away, but it was just likeit was glued on. I asked her 
if she felt that way too, she said she used to, but it was noth- 
ing when you got used to it. That made me mad. But she 
is older than me and knows more about it. When I was go- 
ing to leave her at the gate, she kissed me, and that was 
worse than putting my arm around her. By gosh, I trem- 
bled all over, just like I had chills, but I was as warm 
as toast. She wouldn’t let go for as much as a minute, and 
I was tired as though I had been carrying coal up stairs. I 
didn’t want to go home at all, but she said it would be the 
best way for me to go home, and come again the next day, 
and the next morning I went to her house before any of 


peck's bad boy. 


85 


them were up, and her Pa came out to let the cat in, and I 
asked him what time his girl got up, and he laffed at me and 
said I had got it bad, and that I better go home and not be 
picked till I got ripe. Say, how much does it cost to get 
married ? ” 

“ Well, I should say you had got it bad,” said the grocery 
man, as he set out a basket of beets. ” Your getting in love 
will be a great thing for your Pa. You won’t have any time 
to play any more jokes on him. 

“ O, I guess we can find time to keep Pa from being lone- 
some. Have you seen him this morning? You ought to 
have seen him last night. You see, my chum’s Pa has got a 
setter dog stuffed. It is one that died two years ago, and he 
thought a great deal of it, and he had it stuffed, for a orna- 
ment. Well, my chum and me took the dog and put it on 
our front steps, and took some cotton and fastened it to the 
dog’s mouth so it looked just like froth, and we got behind 
the door and waited for Pa to come home from the theatre. 
When Pa started to come up the steps I growled and Pa 
looked at the dog and said, ” Mad dog, by crimus,” and he 
started down the sidewalk, and my chum barked just like a 
dog, and I ” Ki-yi’d ” and growled like a dog that gets licked, 
and you ought to see Pa run. He went around in the alley 
and was going to get in the basement window, and my chum 
had a revolver with some blank cartridges, and he went down 
in the basement and when Pa was trying to open the windov/ 
my chum began to fire towards Pa. Pa hollered that it was 
only him, and not a burglar, but after my chum fired four 
shots Pa run and climbed over the fence, and then we took 
the dog home and I stayed with my chum all night, and this 
morning Ma said Pa didn’t get home till four o’clock and 
then a policeman came with him, and Pa talked about mad 
dogs and being taken for a burglar and nearly killed, and she 
said she was afraid Pa had took to drinking again, and she 


peck’s bad boy. 


86 


asked me if I heard any firing of guns, and I said no, and 
then she put a wet towel on Pa’s head.” 

“ You ought to be ashamed,” said the grocery man. “ How 
does your Pa like your being in love with the girl? Does he 
seem to encourage you in it?” 

“ Oh, yes, she was up to our house to borry some tea, and 
Pa patted her on the cheek and hugged her and said she was 

a dear little daisy, 
and wanted her to 
sit in his lap, but 
when I wanted him 
to let me have fifty 
cents to buy her 
some ice cream he 
said that was all 
nonsense. Hesaid: 
“ Look at your 
Ma. Eating ice 
cream when she 
was a girl was what 
injured her health 
for life.” I asked 
Ma about it, and 
she said Pa nevei- 
laid out ten cents 
for ice cream or 
any luxury for her 
!/, "r 'liii, '' in all the five years 

PA WANTED HER TO SIT IN HIS LAP. he was Sparking 
her. She says he took her to a circus once but he got free 
tickets for carrying water for the elephant. She says Pa was 
tighter than the bark to a tree. I tell you it’s going to be 
different with me. If there is anything that girl wants she 
is going to have it if I have to sell Ma’s copper boiler to get 



peck’s bad boy. 


87 


the money. What is the use of having wealth if you hoard 
it up and don’t enjoy it? This family will be run on differ- 
ent principles after this, you bet. Say, how much are those 
yellow wooden pocket combs in the show case? I’ve a good 
notion to buy them for hen How would one of them round 
mirrors, with a zinc cover, do for a present for a girl? 
There’s nothing too good for her?" 


CHAPTER XVII. 


HIS PA FIGHTS HORNETS. 

I'he Old Man looks bad — The woods of Wauwatosa — The Old Man 
takes a nap — “Helen damnation” — “Hell is out for noon” — The 
liver medicine — Its wonderful effects — The bad boy is drunk! 
— Give me a lemon!— A sight of the comet!— The hired girl’s 
religion. 

“ Go away from here now,” said the grocery man to the 
bad boy, as he came into the store and was going to draw 
some cider out of a barrel into a pint measure that had flies 
in it. “ Get right out of this place, and don’t let me see you 
around here until the health officer says your Pa has got 
over the small-pox. I saw him this morning and his face is 
all covered with postules, and they will have him in the pest 
house before night. You git,” and he picked up a butter 
tryer and went for the boy, who took refuge behind a barrel 
of onions, and held up his hands as though Jesse James had 
drawn a bead on him. 

” O, you go and chase yourself. That is not small-pox 
Pa has got. He had a fight with a nest of hornets,” said the 
boy. 

“ Hornets! Well, I’ll be cussed,” remarked the grocery 
man, as he put up the butter tryer, and handed the boy a 
slice of rotten muskmelon. “ How in the world did he get 
into a nest of hornets? I hope you did not have anything 
to do with it.” 

The boy buried his face in the melon, until he looked as 
though a yellow gash had been cut from his mouth to his 
ears, and after swallowing the melon, he said, " Well, Pa 


peck’s bad boy. 


89 


says I was responsible, and he says that settles it, and I can 
go my way and he will go his. He said he was willing to 
overlook everything I had done to make his life unbearable, 
but steering him into a nest of hornets, and then getting 
drunk, was too much, and I can go,” 



“ What, you haven’t been drunk,” says the grocery man. 
” Great heavens, that will kill your poor old father.” 

“O, I guess it won’t kill him very much. He has been 
getting drunk for twenty years, and he says he is healthier 
to day than he ever was, since his liver got to working again. 




90 


peck’s bad boy. 


You see, Monday was a regular Indian summer day, and Pa 
said he would take me and my chum out in the woods to 
gather hickory nuts, if we would be good. I said I would, 
and my chum said he would, and we got a couple of bags 
and went away out to Wauwatosa, in the woods. We club- 
bed the trees and got more nuts than anybody, and had a 
lunch, and Pa was just enjoying his religion first rate. While 
Pa was taking a nap under a tree, my chum and me looked 
around and found a hornets’ nest on the lower limb of the 
tree we were sitting under, and my chum said it would be a 
good joke to get a pole and run it into the hornet’s nest and 
then run. Honest, I didn’t think about Pa being under the tree, 
and I went into the field and got a hop pole, and put the 
small end of it into the nest, and gouged the nest a couple 
of times, and when the boss hornet came out of the hole, and 
looked sassy, and then looked back in the hole and whistled 
to the other, hornets to come out and have a circus and they 
began to come out, my chum and me run and climbed over 
a fence, and got behind a pile of hop poles that was stacked 
up. I guess the hornets saw my Pa just as quick as they got 
out of the nest, cause pretty soon we heard Pa call to ‘Helen 
Damnation,’ or some woman we didn’t know, and then he 
took his coat, that he had been using for a pillow, and whip- 
ped around, and he slapped hisself on the shoulders, and 
then he picked up the lunch basket and pounded around like 
he was crazy, and bime-by he started on a run toward town, 
holding his pants up, cause his suspenders was hanging down 
on his hips, and I never see a man run so, and fan himself 
with a basket. We could hear him yell, ‘come on boys. 
Hell is out for noon’ and he went over a hill, and we didn’t 
see him any more. We waited till near dark because we was 
afraid to go after the bags of nuts till the hornets had gone 
to bed, and then we came home. The bags were awful 


peck’s bad boy. 


91 

heavy, and I think it was real mean in Pa to go off and leave 
us, and not help carry the bags.” 

“I swan,” says the grocery man, “You are too mean to 
live. But what about your getting drunk ? ” 

“ O, I was going to tell you. Pa had a bottle of liver 
medicine in his coat pocket, and when he was whipping his 
hornets the bottle dropped out, and I picked it up to carry it 
home to him. My chum wanted to smell of the liver medi- 
cine, so he took out the cork and it smelled just like in front 
of a liquor store on East Water street, and my chum said his 
liver was bad, too, and he took a swaller, and he said he 
should think it was enough to cut a feller’s liver up 
in slices, but it was good, and then I had a peculiar feeling 
in my liver, and my chum said his liver felt better after he 
took a swaller, and so I took a swaller, and it was the offul- 
est liver remedy I ever tasted. It scorched my throat just 
like the diphtheria, but it beats the diphtheria, or sore throat, 
all to pieces, and my chum and me laughed we was so tick- 
led. Did you ever take liver medicine? You know how it 
makes you feel as if your liver had got on top of your lights, 
and like you wanted to jump and holler. Well, sir, honest 
that liver medicine made me dance a jig on the viaduct 
bridge, and an old soldier from the soldier’s home came 
along and asked us what was the matter, and we told him 
about our livers, and the liver medicine, and showed him the 
bottle, and he said he sposed he had the worst 
liver in the world, and said the doctors at the home 
couldn’t cure him. It’s a mean boy that won’t help an old 
veteran cure his liver, so I told him to try Pa’s liver remedy 
and he took a regular cow swaller, and said, here’s to your 
livers, hpys.’ He must have a liver bigger nor a cow’s, and 
I guess it is better now.” 

“Then my liver begun to feel curious again, and my chum 
said his liver was getting torpid some m , and we both 


92 


peck’s bad boy. 


of US took another dose, and started home and we got gen- 
erous, and gave our nuts all away to some boys. Say, does 
iiver medicine make a feller give away all he has got? 
We kept taking medicine every five blocks, and we locked 
arms and went down a back street and sung ‘ O it is a 
glorious thing to be a pirut king,’ and when we got home 
my head felt bigger nor a washtub and I thought p’raps 
my liver had gone to my head, and Pa came to the door 
with his face tied up in towels, and some yellow stuff on 



here’s to your liver, boys. 

the towels that smelled like anarchy, and I slapped him 
on the shoulder and shouted, ‘ Hello, Gov., how’s your 
liver,’ and gave him the bottle, and it was empty, and he 
asked me if we had been drinking that medicine and he 
said he was ruined, and I told him he could get some 
more down to the saloon, and he took hold of my collar and 
I lammed him in the ear, and he bounced me up stairs, and 
then I turned pale, and had cramps, and I didn’t remember 


peck’s bad boy. 


93 


any more till I woke up and the doctor was with me, and Pa 
and Ma looked scared, and the Doc. had a tin .hing like you 
draw water out of a country cistern, only smaller, and Ma 
said if it hadn’t been for the stomach pump she wouldn’t 
have had any little boy, and I looked at the knobs on Pa’s 
face and I laffed and asked Pa if he got into the hornets, too. 
Then the Doc. laffed, and Ma cried, and Pa swore, and I 
groaned, and got sick again, and then they let me go to 
sleep again, and this morning I had the offulest headache, 
and Pa’s face looks like he had fallen on a picket fence. 
When I got out I went to my chum’s house to see if they had 
got him pumped out, and his Ma drove me out with a broom, 
and she says I will ruin every boy in the neighborhood. Pa 
says I was drunk and kicked him in the groin when he fired 
me up stairs, and I asked him how I could be drunk just 
taking medicine for my liver, and he said go to the devil, 
and I came over here. Say, give me a lemon to settle my 
stomach.” 

“ But, look-a-here,” says the grocery man, as he gave the 
boy a little dried up lemon, about as big as a prune, and told 
him he was a terror, ” what is the matter with your eye wink- 
ers and your hair? They seem to be burned off.” 

“ O, thunder, didn’t Pa tell you about the comet explod- 
ing and burning us all ? That was the worst thing since the 
flood, when Noarrun the excursion boat from Kalamazoo to 
Mount Ararat. You see we had been reading about the 
comet, which is visible at four o’clock in the morning, and I 
heard Pa tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up when 
she got up to set the pancakes and go to early mass so 
they could see the comet. The hired girl is a Cathlick, 
and she don’t make no fuss about it, but she has got 
more good, square religion than a dozen like Pa. It 
makes a good deal of difference how religion affects 
different people, don’t it? Now Pa’s religoin makes him wild, 


94 


peck’s bad boy. 


and he wants to kick my pants, and pull my hair, but the 
hired girl’s religion makes her want to hug me; if I am abus- 
ed, and she puts anarchy on my bruises, and gives me pie. 
Pa wouldn’t get up at four o’clock in the morning to go to 
early mass, unless he could take a fish pole along and some 
angleworms. The hired, girl prays when nobody sees her 
but God, but Pa wants to get a church full of sisterin’, and 
pray loud, as though he was an auctioneer selling tin razors. 
Say, it beats all what a difference liver medicine has on two 
people, too. Now that hickory nut day, when me and my 
chum got full of Pa’s liver medicine, I felt so good natured 
I gave my hickory nuts away to the children, and wanted to 
give my coat and pants to a poor tramp, but my chum, who 
ain’t no bigger’n me, got on his ear and wanted to kick the 
socks off a little girl who was going home from school. It’s 
queer, ain’t it. Well, about the comet. When I heard Pa 
tell the hired girl to wake him and Ma up, I told her to wake 
me up about half an hour before she waked Pa up, and then 
I got my chum to stay with me, and we made a comet to 
play on Pa. You see my room is right over Pa’s room, and 
I got two lengths of stove pipe and covered them all over 
with phosphorus, so they looked just as bright as a comet. 
Then we got two Roman candles and a big sky rocket, and 
we were going to touch off the Roman candles and the sky 
rocket just as Pa and Ma got to looking at the comet. I 
didn’t know that a sky rocket would kick back, did you ? 
Well, you’d a dide to see that comet. We tied a piece of 
white rubber garden hose to the stove pipe for a tail and 
went to bed, and when the girl woke us up we laid for Pa 
and Ma. Pretty soon we heard Pa’s window open, and I 
looked out, and Pa and Ma had their heads and half their 
bodies out of the window. They had their night shirts 
on and looked just like the picture of Millerites waiting 


peck’s bad boy. 


95 

for the world to come to an end. Pa looked up and seed 
the stove pipe and he said: 

“ Hanner, for God’s sake, look up there. That is the 
damest comet I ever see. It is as bright as day. See the 
tail of it. Now that is worth getting up to see.” 

Just then my chum lit the two Roman candles and I touched 
off the rocket, and that’s where my eye winkers went. The 
rocket busted the joints of the stove pipe and they fell down 
on Pa, but Ma got her head inside before the comet struck, 
and wasn’t hurt, but one length of the stove pipe struck Pa 
endways on the neck and almost cut a biscuit out of him, 
and the fire and sparks just poured down in his hair, and 
burned his night shirt. Pa was scart. He thought the world 
was coming to an end, and the window came down on his 
back and he began to sing, “Earth’s but a desert drear. 
Heaven is my home.” I see he was caught in the window, 
and I went down stairs to put out the fire on his nightshirt, and 
put up the windowto let him in, and he said. “My boy your Ma 
and I are going to Heaven, but I fear you will go to the bad 
place,” and I told him I would take my chances, and he bet- 
terputonhis pants if he was goinganywhere where there would 
be liable to be ladies present, and when he got his head in Ma 
told him the world was not coming to an end, but somebody 
had been setting off fireworks, and she said she guessed it 
was their dear little boy, and when I saw Pa feeling under 
the bed for a bed slat I got up stairs pretty previous now, 
and don’t you forget it, and Ma put cold cream on where the 
sparks burnt Pa’s shirt, and Pa said another day 
wouldn’t pass over his head before he had me in the Reform 
School. Well, if I go to the Reform School, somebody’s got 
to pay attention, you can bet your liver. A boy can’t have 
any fun these days without everybody thinks he is an heathen. 
What hurt did it do to play comet ? It’s a mean father that 
won’t stand a little scorching in the interest of science.” 


96 


peck’s bad boy. 


The boy went out, scratching the place where his eye 
winkers were, and then the grocery man knew what it was 
that caused the fire engines to be out around at four o’clock 
in the morning, looking for a fire. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


HIS PA GOES HUNTING. 

Mutilated jaw — The old man has taken to swearing again — Ouc west 
duck shooting — His coat-tail shot off— Shoots at a wild goose — The 
gun kicks ! — Throws a chair at his son — The astonished she Deacon. 

“What has your Pa got his jaw tied up for, and what 
makes his right eye so black and blue,” asked the grocery 
man of the bad boy, as the boy came to bring some butter 
back that was strong enough to work on the street. “ You 
haven’t hurt your poor old Pa, have you? ” 

“ O, his jaw is all right now. You ought to have seen him 
when the gun was engaged in kicking him,” says the boy as 
he set the butter plate on the cheese box. 

“ Well, tell us about it. What had the gun against your 
Pa? I guess it was the son-of-a-gun that kicked him,” said 
the grocery man, as he winked at a servant girl who came in 
v/ith her apron over her head, after two cents worth of yeast. 

“ I’ll tell you, if you will keep watch down street for Pa. 
He says he is damned if he will stand this foolishness any 
longer.” 

“What, does your father swear, while he is on proba- 
tion?” 

“ Swear ! Well, I should cackle. You ought to have 
heard him when he come to, and spit out the loose teeth. 
You see, since Pa quit drinking he is a little nervous, and 
the doctor said he ought to go out somewhere and get biz- 
ness off his mind, and hunt ducks, and row a boat, and get 
strength, and Pa s^iid shooting ducks was just in his hand, 
and for me to' go and borrow a gun, and I could go along 

' 97 


7 


98 


peck’s bad boy. 


and carry game. So I got a gun at the gun store, and some 
cartridges, and we went away out west on the cars, more 
than fifty miles, and stayed two days. You ought to seen 
Pa. He was just like a boy that was sick, and couldn’t go to 
school. When we got out by the lake he jumped up and 
cracked his heels together,' and yelled. I thought he was 
crazy, but he was only cunning. First I scared him nearly to 
death by firing off the gun behind him, as we were going 
along the bank, and blowing off a piece of his coat-tail. I 
knew it wouldn’t hurt him, but he turned pale and told me 
to lay down that gun, and he picked it up and carried it the 
rest of the way, and I was offul glad cause it was a heavy 
gun. His coat-tail smelled like when you burn a rag to 
make the air in the room stop smelling so, all the forenoon. 
You know Pa is a little near sighted but he don’t believe it, 
so I got some of the wooden decoy ducks that the hunters 
use, and put them in the lake, and you ought to see Pa get 
down on his belly and crawl through the grass, to get up 
close to them. He shot twenty times at the wooden ducks, 
and wanted me to go in and fetch them out, but I told him 
I was no retreiver dog. Then Pa was mad, and said all he 
brought me along for was to carry game, and I had come 
near shooting his hind leg off, and now I wouldn’t carry 
ducks. While he was coaxing me to go in the cold water 
without my pants on, I heard some wild geese squawking, 
and then Pa heard them, and he was excited. He said you 
lay down behind the muskrat house, and I will get a goose. 
I told him he couldn’t kill a goose with that fine shot, and I 
gave him a large cartridge the gun store man loaded for me, 
with a handful of powder in, and I told Pa it was a goose 
cartridge, and Pa put it in the gun. The geese came along, 
about a mile high, squawking, and Pa aimed at a dark cloud 
and fired. Well, I was offul scared, I thought I had killed 
him. The gun just rared up and come down on his jaw, 






peck’s bad boy. 


99 


shoulder and everywhere, and he went over a log and struck 
on his shoulder, the gun flew out of his hands, and Pa he 
laid there on his neck, with his feet over the log, and that 
was the first time he didn’t scold me since he got religion. 
I felt offul sorry, and got some dirty water in my hat and 
poured it down his neck, and laid him out, and pretty soon 
he opened his eyes and asked if any of the passengers got 



THE GUN FLEW OUT OF HIS HANDS. 

ashore alive. Then his eye swelled out so it looked like a 
blue door-knob, and Pa felt of his jaw, and asked if the en- 
gineer and fireman jumped off, or if they went down with 
the engine. He seemed dazed, and then he saw the gun, 
and he said take the dam thing away, it is going to kick me 
again. Then he got his senses and wanted to know if he 
killed a goose, and I told him no, but he nearly broke one’s 




100 


peck’s bad boV. 


jaw, and then he said the gun kicked him when it went off, 
and he laid down and the gun kept kicking him more than 
twenty times, when he was trying to sleep. He went back 
to the tavern where we were stopping and wouldn’t touch 
the gun, but made me lug it. He told the tavern keeper 
that he fell over a wire fence, but I think he began to sus- 
pect, after he spit the loose teeth out, that the gun was 
loaded for bear, I suppose he will kill me some day. Don’t 
you think he will?” 

“ Any coroner’s jury would let him off and call it justi- 
fiable, if he should kill you. You must be a lunatic. Has 
your Pa talked much about it since you got back?” asked 
the grocery man. 

“ Not much. You see he can’t talk much without break- 
ing his jaw. But he was able to throw a chair at me. You 
see I thought I would joke him a little, cause when anybody 
feels bad a joke kind of livens em up, so we were talking 
about Pa’s liver, and Ma said he seemed to be better since his 
liver had become more active, and I said,‘ Pa, when you was a 
rolling over with the gun chasing you, and kicking you every 
round, your liver was active enough, cause it was on top half 
the time.’ Then Pa throwed the chair at me. He says he 
believes I knew that cartridge was loaded. But you ought 
to seen the fun when an old she deacon of Pa’s church called 
to collect some money to send to the heathens. Ma wasn’t 
in, so Pa went to the parlor to stand her off, and when she 
see that Pa’s face was tied up, and his eye was black, and his 
jaw cracked, she held up both hands and said, ‘ O, my dear 
brother you have been drunk again. You have backslid. 
You will have to go back and commence your probation all 
over again,’ and Pa said, ‘Damfido,’ and the old she deacon 
screamed and went off without getting enough money to buy 
a deck of round cornered cards for the heathen. Say, what 
does ‘damfido,’ mean? Pa has some of the queerest eX" 
pressions, since he joined the church.” 


CHAPTER XIX. 


HIS PA IS “ NISHIATED.” 

Are You a Mason? — No Harm to Play at Lodge — Why Goats are Kept 
in Stables — The bad boy Gets the Goat Up Stairs — The Grand 
Bumper Degree — Kyan Pepper on the Goat’s Beard — “ Bring Forth 
the Royal Bumper ” — The Goat on the Rampage. 

“Say, are you a Mason, or a nodfellow, or anything?' 
asked the bad boy of the grocery^rnan^ as he went to the 
cinnamon bag on the shelf and took put a long stick of cin- 
namon bark to chew. 

“Why, yes, of course I am, bu^miat set you to thinking 
of that,” asked the grocery ihan., as}ie went to the desk and 
charged the boy’s father with a half a pound of cinnamon. 

“Well, do the goats bunt when you nishiate a fresh can- 
didate?” 

“ No, of coupe not. The goats are cheap ones, that have 
no life, and we muzzle them, and put pillows over their heads, 
so they can’t hurt anybody,” says the grocery man, as he 
winked at , a brpther Odd Fellow who was seated on a sugar 
barrel, looking mysterious, “ But why do you ask?” 

“ O, nothin, only I wish me and my chum had muzzled 
our goat with a pillow. Pa would have enjoyed his becom- 
ing a member of our lodge better. You see. Pa had been 
telling us how much good the Masons and Odd Fellows did, 
and said we ought to try and grow up good so we could jine 
the lodges when we got big, and I asked Pa if it would do 
any jiurt for us to have a play lodge in my room, and pur- 
tend to nishiate, and Pa said it wouldn’t do any hurt. He 
said it wohld improve our minds and learn us to be men. So 

101 


102 


peck’s bad boy. 


my chum and me borried a goat that lives in a livery stable. 
Say, did you know they keep a goat in a livery stable so the 
horses won’t get sick? They get used to the smell of the 
goat, and after that nothing can make them sick but a glue 
factory. I wish my girl boarded in a livery stable, then she 
would get used to the smell. I went home with her from 
church Sunday night, and the smell of th^ goat on my 
clothes made her sick to her stummick, and she acted just 
like an excursion on the lake, and said if I didn’t go and 
bury myself and take the smell out of me she wouldn’t never 
go with me again. She was just as pale as a ghost, and the 
prespiration on her lip was just zif she had been hit by a 
street sprinkler. You see my chum and me had to carry the 
goat up to my room when Pa and Ma was out riding, and he 
blatted so we had to tie a handkerchief around his nose, and 
his feet made such a noise on the floor that we put some 
baby’s socks on his feet. Gosh, how frowy a goat smells, 
don’t it? I should think you Masons must have strong 
stummicks. Why don’t you have a skunk or a mule for a trade 
mark. Take a mule, and annoint it with limburg cheese and 
you could nishiate and make a candidate smell just as bad as 
with a gosh darn mildewed goat. 

** Well, my chum and me practiced with that goat until 
he could bunt the picture of a goat every time. We bor- 
ried a buck beer sign from a saloon man and hung it on 
the back of a chair, and the goat would hit it every time. 
That night Pa wanted to know what we were doing up in my 
room, and I told him we were playing lodge, and improving 
our minds, and Pa said that was right, there was nothing that 
did boys of our age half so much good as to imitate men, 
and store by useful nollidge. Then my chum asked Pa if he 
didn’t want to come up and take the grand bumper degree^ 
and Pa laffed and said he didn’t care if he did, just to en- 
courage us boys in innocent prastime, that was so improving 


peck’s bad boy. 


103 


to our intellex. We had shut the goat up in a closet in my 
room, and he had got over blatting, so we took off the hand- 
kerchief, and he was eating some of my paper collars, and 
skate straps. We went up stairs, and told Pa to come up 
pretty soon and give three distinct raps, and when we asked 
him who comes there he must say, ‘ a pilgrim who wants to 
join your ancient order and ride the goat.’ Ma wanted to 
come up too, but we told her if she come in it would break 
up the lodge, cause a woman couldn’t keep a secret, and we 
didn’t have any side saddle for the goat. Say, if you never 
tried it, the next time you nishiate a man in your Mason’s 



THE GOAT WOULD HIT IT EVERY TIME. 


lodge you sprinkle a little kyan pepper on the goat’s beard 
just afore you turn him loose. You can get three times as much 
fun to the square inch of goat. You wouldn’t think it was 
the same goat. Well, we got all fixed and Pa rapped, and 
we let him in and told him he must be blindfolded, and he 
got on his’ knees a laffing and I tied a towel around his eyes, 
and then I turned him around and made him get down on 
his hands also, and then his back was right toward the 
closet door, and I put the buck beer sign right against Pa’s 
clothes. He was laffing all the time, and said we boys were 
as full of fun as they made ’em, and we told him it was a 


104 


peck’s bad boy. 


solemn occasion, and we wouldn’t permit no levity, and if he 
didn’t stop laffing we couldn’t give him the grand bumper de- 
gree. Then everything was ready, and my chum had his hand 
on the closet door, and some kyan pepper in his other hand 
and I asked Pa in low bass tones if he felt as though he 
wanted to turn back, or if he had nerve enough to go ahead 
and take the degree. I warned him that it was full of 
dangers, as the goat was loaded for bear, and told him he yet 
had time to retrace his steps if he wanted to. He said he 



PA WAS YELLING MURDER AND MA WAS SCREAMING FIRE. 


wanted the whole bizness, and we could go ahead with the 
menagerie. Then I said to Pa that if he had decided to go 
ahead, and not blame us for-the consequences, to repeat after 
me the following: ‘ Bring forth the Royal Bumper and let 
him Bump.^ \ 

: “ Pa repeated , the words, and my chum sprinkled the 
.kyan.pepper, on the goat’s mustache, and he sneezed once 
and looked sassy, and then he see the lager beer goat raring 


peck’s bad boy. 


105 


up, and he started for it, just like a cow catcher, and blatted. 
Pa is real fat, but he knew he got hit, and he grunted, and 
he said, ‘ Hell’s-fire, what you boys doin’?’ and then the 
goat gave him another degree, and Pa pulled off the towel 
and got up and started for the stairs, and so did the goat, 
and Ma was at the bottom of the stairs listening, and when I 
looked over the banisters Pa and Ma and the goat were all 
in a heap, and Pa was yelling murder, and Ma was scream- 
ing fire, and the goat was blatting, and sneezing, and bunt- 
ing, and the hired girl came into the hall and the goat took 
after her and she crossed herself just as the goat struck her 
and said, ‘ Howly mother protect me!’ and went down stairs 
the way we boys slide down hill, with both hands on herself, 
and the goat rared up and blatted, and Pa and Ma went 
into their room and shut the door, and then my chum 
and me opened the front door and drove the goat out. 
The minister, who comes to see Ma every three times a 
week, was just ringing the bell, and the goat thought he 
wanted to be nishiated too, and gave him one, for luck, 
and then went down the sidewalk blatting, and sneezing, 
and the minister came into the parlor and said he was 
stabbed, and then Pa came out of his room with his suspenders 
hanging down, and he didn’t know the minister was there, 
and he said cuss words, and Ma cried and told Pa he would 
go to hell sure, and Pa said he didn’t care, he would kill 
that kussid goat afore he went, and I told Pa the minister 
was in the parlor, and he and Ma went down and said the 
weather was propitious for a revival, and it seemed as though 
an outpouring of the spirit was about, to be vouchsafed to 
His people, and none of them sot down but Ma, cause the 
goat didn’t hit her, and while they were talking religion, 
with their mouths, and kussin the goat inwardly, my chum 
and me adjourned the lodge, and I went and stayed with him 
all night, and I haven’t been home since. But I don’t believe 


io6 


peck’s bad boy. 


Pa will lick me, cause he said he would not hold us responsi- 
ble for the consequences. He ordered the goat hisself, and 
we filled the order, don’t you see? Well, I guess I will go 
and sneak in the back way, and find out from the hired girl 
how the land lays. She won’t go back on me, cause the 
goat was not loaded for hired girls. She just happened to 
get in at the wrong time. Good-bye, sir. Remember and 
give your goat kyan pepper in your lodge.” 

As the boy went away, and skipped over the back fence, 
the grocery man said to his brother Odd Fellow, “ If that boy 
don’t beat the devil then I never saw one that did. The old 
man ought to have him sent to a lunatic asylum.” 


f 


CHAPTER XX. 

HIS GIRL GOES BACK ON HIM. 

The grocery man is afraid — But the bad boy is a wreck! — “ My girl has 
shook me! ” — The bad boy’s heart is broken — Still he enjoys a bit 
of fun — Cod-liver oil on the pan-cakes — The hired girls made vic- 
tims — The bad boy vows vengeance on his girl and the telegraph 
messenger. 

“Now you git right away from here,” said the grocery 
man to the bad boy, as he came in with a hungry look on 
his face, and a wild light in his eye. “ I am afraid of you. 
I wouldn’t be surprised to see you go off half cocked and 
blow us all up. I think you are a devil. You may have a 
billy goat, or a shot gun or a bottle of poison concealed 
about you. Condemn you, the police ought to muzzle you. 
You will kill somebody yet. Here take a handful of prunes 
and go off somewhere and enjoy yourself, and keep away 
from here;” and the grocery man went on sorting potatoes, 
and watching the haggard face of the boy. “What ails you 
anyway?” he added, as the boy refused the prunes, and 
seemed to be sick to the stomach. 

“ O, I am a wreck,” said the boy, as he grated his teeth, 
and looked wicked. “ You see before you a shadow. I 
have drank of the sweets of life, and now only the dregs 
remain. I look back at the happiness of the past two 
weeks, during which I have been permitted to gaze into the 
fond blue eyes of my loved one, and carry her rubbers to 
school for her to wear home when it rained, to hear the 
sweet words that fell from her lips as she lovingly told me 
I was a terror, and as I think it is all over, and that I shall 
never again place my arm around her waist, I feel as if the 

107 




io8 


peck’s bad boy. 


world had been kicked off its base and was whirling through 
space, liable to be knocked into a cocked hat, and I don’t 
care a darn. My girl has shook me.” 

“Sho! You don’t say so,” said the grocery man as he 
threw a rotten potato into a basket of good ones that were 
going to the orphan asylum. “Well, she showed sense. 
You would have blown her up, or broken her neck, or some- 
thing. But don't feel bad. You will soon find another girl 
that will discount her, and you will forget this one.” 

“ Never! ” said the boy, as he nibbled at a piece of 
codfish that he had picked off. “ I shall never allow my 
affections to become entwined about another piece of calico. 
It unmans me, sir. Henceforth I am a hater of the whole 
girl race. From this out I shall harbor revenge in my 
heart, and no girl can cross my path and live. I want to 
grow up to become a he school ma’am, or a he milliner, or 
something, where I can grind girls into the dust under the 
heel of a terrible despotism, and make them sue for mercy. 
To think that girl, on whom I have lavished my heart’s best 
love and over thirty cents, in the past two weeks, could let 
the smell of a goat on my clothes come between, us, and 
break off an acquaintance that seemed to be the forerunner 
of a happy future, and say, ‘ ta-ta ’ to me, and go off to 
dancing school with a telegraph messenger boy who wears 
a sleeping-car porter uniform, is too much, and my heart is 
broken. I will lay for that messenger some night, when he 
is delivering a message in our ward, and I will make him 
think lightning has struck the wire and run in on his bench. 
O, you don’t know anything about the woe there is in this 
world. You never loved many people, did you? ” 

The grocery man admitted he never loved very hard, but 
he knew a little something about it from an aunt of his, who 
got mashed on a Chicago drummer. “ But your father must 
be having a rest while your whole mind is occupied with 


I>ECk's bad BOV. 



109 

your love affair,” said 
he. 

“Yes,” said the 
boy, with a vacant 
look,” I take no inter- 
est in the pleasure of 
the chase any more, 
though I did have a 
little quiet fun this 
morning at the break- 
fast table. You see 
Pa is the contrariest 
man ever was. If I 
complain that any- 
thing at the table 
don’t taste good, Pa 
says it is all right. 
This morning I took 
the syrup pitcher and 
emptied out the white 
syrup and put in 
some cod-liver oil that 
Ma is taking for her 
cough. I put some 
on my pancakes and 
pretended to taste it, 
and I told Pa the 
syrup was sour and 
not fit to eat. Pa was 
mad in a second, and 
he poured out some 
on his pancakes, and 
said I was getting too 
confounded particu- 
lar. He said the 


no 


peck’s bad boy. 


syrup was good enough for him, 
and he sopped his pancakes in 
it and fired some down his neck. 
He is a gaul durned hypocrite, 
that’s what he is. I could see 
by his face that the cod-liver 
oil was nearly killing him, but 
he said that syrup was all right, 
and if I didn’t eat mine he 
would break my back, and by 
gosh, I had to eat it, and Pa 
said he guessed he hadn’t got 
much appetite, and he would 
just drink a cup of coffee and 
eat a donut. 

“ I like to dide, and that is 
one thing, I think, that makes 
this disappointment in love 
harder to bear. But I felt sorry 
for Ma. Ma ain’t got a very 
strong stummick, and when she 
got some of that cod-liver oil 
in her mouth she went right up 
stairs, sicker’n a horse, and Pa 
had to help her, and she had 
nooralgia all the morning. I 
eat pickles to take the taste out 
of my mouth, and then I laid 
for the hired girls. They eat 
too much syrup, anyway, and 
when they got on to that cod- 
liver oil, and swallowed a lot of 
it, one of them, a nirish girl, 
she got up from the table and 




peck’s bad boy. 


Ill 


put her hand on her corset, and said, ‘ Howly Jaysus,’ and 
went out in the kitchen, as pale as Ma is when she has pow- 
der on her face, and the other girl who is Dutch, she swal- 
lowed a pancake and said, ‘ Mine Gott, vas de matter from 
me,’ and she went out and leaned on the coal bin, then they 
talked Irish and Dutch, and got clubs, and started to look for 
me, and I thought I would come over here. 

“ The whole family is sick, but it is not from love, like 
my illness, and they will get over it, while I shall fill an early 
grave, but not till I have made that girl and the telegraph 
messenger wish they were dead. Pa and I are going to 
Chicago next week, and I’ll bet we’ll have some fun. Pa 
says I need a change. of air, and I think he is going to try and 
lose me. It’s a cold day when I get left anywhere that 
I can’t find my way back. Well, good-bye, old rotten 
potatoes.” 


CHAPTER XXI. 

HE AND HTS PA IN CHICAGO. 

Nothing like traveling to give tone — Laughing in the wrong place 
— A diabolical plot — His Pa arrested as a kidnapper — The numbers 
on the doors changed — The wrong room — "Nothin the mazzer with 
me, pet !” — The tell-tale hat. 

“What is this I hear about your Pa’s being arrested in 
Chicago,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came 
in with a can for kerosene and a jug for vinegar. 

“ Well, it was true, but the police let him go after they 
hit him a few licks and took him to the station,” said the 
boy, as he got the vinegar into the kerosene can, and the 
kerosene in the jug. “You see. Pa and me went down there 
to stay over night, and have fun. Ma said she druther we 
would be away than not when they were cleaning house, 
and Pa thought it would do me good to travel, and soit of 
get tone, and he thought maybe I’d be better, and not play 
jokes, but I guess it is born in me. Do you know I actually 
think of mean things to do when I am in the most solemn 
places. They took me to a funeral once, and I got to 
thinking what a stampede there would be if the corpse 
would come to life and sit up in the coffin, and I snickered 
right out, and Pa took me out doors and kicked my pants. 
I doTi’t think he orter kicked me for it, cause I didn’t think 
of it a purpose. Such things have occurred, and I have 
read about them, and a poor boy ought to be allowed to 
think, hadn’t he? ” 

“ Yes, but what about his being arrested. Never mind the 
funeral,” said the grocery mau, as he took his knife and 
picked some of the lead out of the weights on the scales 

112 


“We went down on the cars, and Pa had a headache, be- 
ca.ise he had been out all night electioneering for the pro- 
hibition ticket, and he was cross, and scolded me, and once 
he pulled my ear cause I asked him if he knew the girl he 
was winking at in a seat across the aisle. I didn’t enjoy my 
self much, and some men were talking about kidnapping 
children, and it gave me an ijee, and just before I got to 
Chicago I went after a drink of water at the other end of the 
car, and I saw a man who looked as though he wouldn't 
stand any fooling, and I whispered to him that the bald- 
headed man I was sitting with was taking me away from my 
home in Milwaukee, and I mistrusted he was going to make 
a thief or a pickpocket of me. I said ‘s-h-h-h,’ and told him 
not to say anything or the man would maul me. Then 1 
went back to the seat and asked Pa to buy me a gold watch, 
and he looked mad and cuffed me on the ear. The man that 
I whispered to got talking with some other men, and when 
we got off the cars at Chica;^' a policeman came up to Pa 
and took him by the neck and said, ‘ Mr. Kidnapper, I guess 
we will run you in.’ Pa was mad and tried to jerk away, and 
the cop choked him, and another cop^came along and helped, 
and the passengers crowded around and wanted to lynch Pa, 
and Pa^ wanted to know what they meant, and they asked 
him where he stole the kid, and he said I was his kid, and 
asked me if I wasn’t, and 1 looked scared, as though I was 
afraid to say no, and I said ‘ Y-e-s S-e-r, I guess so.’ Then 
the police said the poor boy was scart, and they would take 
us both to the station, and they made Pa walk spry, and 
when he held back they jerked him along. He was offul 
mad and said he would make somebody smart for this, and I 
hoped it wouldn’t be me. At the station they charged Pa 
with kidnapping a boy from Milwaukee, and he said it was 
a lie, and I was his boy, and I said of course I was, and the 
boss asked who told the cops Pa was a kidnapper, and they 


II4 


peck's bad boy. 


said ‘damfino,* and then the boss told Pa he could go, but 
not to let it occur again, and Pa and me went away. I looked 
so sorry for Pa that he never tumbled to me, that I was to 
blame. We walked around town all day, and went to the 
stores, and at night Pa was offul tired, and he put me to bed 
in the tavern and he went out to walk around and get rested 
I was not tired, and I walked all around the hotel. I thought 
Pa had gone to a theatre, and that made me mad, and I thought 



WHEN PA HELD BACK THEY JERKED HIM ALONG. 


I would play a joke on him. Our room was 210 and the next 
was 212, and an old maid with a Scotch terrier occupied 212. 
I saw her twice and she called me narhes, cause she thought 
I wanted to steal her dog. That made me mad at her, and 
so I took my jack knife and drew the tacks out of the tin 
thing that the numbers were painted on, and put the old 
maid’s number on our door and our number on her door, and 
then I went to bed. I tried to keep awake, so as to help 
Pa if he had any difficulty, but I guess I got asleep, but woke 


peck’s bad boy. 


II5 

up when the dog barked. If the dog had not woke me up, 
the woman’s scream would, and if that hadn't, Pa would. 
You see, Pa came home from the theatre about ’leven, and 
he had been drinking. He says everybody drinks when 



“NOTHIN THE MATTER WITH ME, PET,” 


they go to Chicago, even the minister. Pa looked at the 
numbers on the doors all along the hall till he found 210 and 
walked right in and pulled off his coat and threw ‘it on the 
lounge where the dog was. The old maid was asleep, but 
the dog barked, and Pa said, ‘ That cussed boy has bought 


ii6 


peck’s bad boy. 


a dog,’ and he kicked the dog, and then the old maid said, 

‘ what is the matter pet?’ 

“ Pa laffed and said, ‘ Nothin themazzer withm^, pet,’ and 
then you ought to have heard the yelling. The old maid 
covered her head and kicked and yelled, and the dog snarled 
and bit Pa on the pants, and Pa had his vest off and his sus- 
penders unbuttoned, and he got scared and took his coat 
and vest and went out in the hall, and I opened our door 
and told Pa he was in the wrong room, and he said he guessed 
he knowed it, and he came in our room and I locked the 
door, and then the bell boy, and the porter, and the clerk 
came up to see what ailed the old maid, and she said a burg- 
lar got in the room, and they found Pa’s hat on the lounge, 
and they took it and told her to be quiet and they would 
find the burglar. Pa was so scared that he sweat like every- 
thing, and the bed was offul warm, and he pretended to go 
to sleep, but he was wondering how he could get his hat 
back. In the morning I told him it would be hard work to 
explain it to Ma how he happened to get into the wrong 
room, and he said it wasn’t necessary to say anything about 
it to Ma. 

“ Then he gave me five dollars to go out and buy him a 
new hat, and he said I might keep the change if I would 
not mention it when I got home, and I got him one for ten 
shillings, and we took the eight o’clock train in the morning 
and came home, and I ’spose the Chicago det'^ctives are try- 
ing to fit Pa’s hat onto a burglar. Pa seemed offully relieved 
when we got across the state line into Wisconsin. But you’d 
a dide to see him come out of that old lady’s room with his 
coat and vest on his arm, and his suspenders hanging down, 
looking scart. He dassent lick me any more or I’ll tell Ma 
where Pa left his hat.” 


CHAPTER XXII. 


HIS PA IS DISCOURAGED. 

"I ain’t no Joner!” — The story of the Ancient Prc^het — The Sunday 
School Folks go back on the bad boy — Cageduats — A Committee 
Meeting — A remarkable Cat-astrophe ! — “ That boy beats Hell!” — 
Basting the bad boy — The Hot-water-in-the Sponge trick. 

“ Say, you leave here mighty quick,” said the grocery man 
to the bad boy, as he came in, with his arm in a sling, and 
backed up against the stove to get warm. “Everything has 
gone wrong since you got to coming here, and I think you 
are a regular Jonah. I find sand in my sugar, kerosene in 
the butter, the codfish is all picked off, and there is some- 
thing wrong every time you come here. Now you leave.” 

“ I ain’t no Joner,” said the boy as he wiped his nose on 
his coat sleeve, and reached into a barrel for a snow apple. 
“ I never swallered no whale. Say, do you believe that story 
about Joner being in the whale’s belly all night ? I don’t. 
The minister was telling about it at Sunday school last Sun- 
day, and asked me what I thought Joner was doing while he 
was in there, and I told him I interpreted the story this way, 
that the whale was fixed up inside with upper and lower 
berths, like a sleeping car, and Joner had a lower berth, and 
the porter made up the berth as soon as Joner came in with 
his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave them to 
the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and 
turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the min- 
ister said I was a bigger fool than Pa was,and that was useless. 
If you go back on me now, I won’t have a friend, except my 
chum and a dog, and I swear, by my halidom, that I never 

117 


peck’s bad boy. 


II8 

put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in your butter. I ad- 
mit the picking off of the codfish, but you can. charge it to 
Pa, the same as you did the eggs that I pushed my chum 
over into last summer, though I thought you did wrong in 
charging Christmas prices for dog day’s eggs. When my 
chum’s Ma scraped his pants she said there was not an egg 
represented on there that was less than two years old. The 
Sunday school folks have all gone back on me, since I put 
kyan pepper on the stove, when they were singing ‘Little 
Drops of Water,’ and they all had to go out doors and air 
themselves. But I didn’t mean to let the pepper drop on 
the stove. I was just holding it over the stove to warm it, 
when my chum hit the funny bone of my elbow. Pa says I 
am a terror to cats. Every time Pa says anything, it gives 
me a new idea. I tell you Pa has got a great brain, but 
sometimes he don’t have it with him. When he said I was a 
terror to cats I thought what fun there is in cats, and me and 
my chum went to stealing cats right off, and before night we 
had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird cage, 
three in Pa’s old hat boxes, three in Ma’s band box, four 
in valises, two in a trunk, and the rest in a closet up 
stairs. 

“That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the 
committee that is going to get up a noyster supper in the 
church was going to meet at our house, and they might 
want to send me on errands. I asked him if my chum 
couldn’t stay too, cause he is the healthiest infant to run 
after errands that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but 
we must remember that there musn’t be no monkey business 
going on. I told him there shouldn’t be no monkey business, 
but I didn’t promise nothing about cats. Well, sir, you’d 
a dide. The committee was in the library by the back 
stairs, and me and my chum got the cat boxes all together, 
at the top of the stairs, and we took them all out and put 


peck’s bad boy. 


1 19 

them in a clothes basket, and just as the minister was 
speaking, and telling what a great good was done by these 
oyster sociables, in bringing the young people together, and 
taking their minds from the wickedness of the world, and 
turning their thoughts into different channels, one of the old 
tom cats in the basket gave a ‘ purmeow ’ that sounded like 
the wail of a lost soul or a challenge to battle. I told my 
chum that we couldn’t hold the bread-board oyer the clothes 
basket much longer, when two or three cats began to yowl, 
and the minister stopped talking, and Pa told Ma to open 
the stair door and tell the hired girl to see what was the 
matter up there. She thought our cat had got shut up in 
the storm door, and she opened the stair door to yell to the 
girl, and then I pushed the clothes basket, cats and all 
down the back stairs. Well, sir, I suppose no committee 
for a noyster supper was ever more astonished. I heard 
Ma fall over a willow rocking chair, and say, ‘ scat,* and I 
heard Pa say, ‘ well. I’m darn’d,’ and a girl that sings in the 
choir say, ‘ Heavens, I am stabbed,’ then my chum and me 
run to the front of the house and come down the front stairs 
looking as inn ocent as could be, and we went into the 
library, and I was just going to tell Pa if there was any 
errands he wanted run, my chum and me was just aching 
to run them, when a yellow cat without any tail was walk- 
ing over the minister, and Pa was throwing a hassock at 
two cats that were clawing each other under the piano, 
and Ma was trying to get her frizzes back on her head, 
and the choir girl was standing on the lounge with her 
dress pulled up, trying to scare cats with her striped stock- 
ings, and the minister was holding his hands up, and I 
guess he was asking a blessing on the cats, and my chum 
opened the front door and all the cats went out. Pa and 
Ma looked at me, and I said it wasn’t me, and the minister 
wanted to know how so much cat hair got on my coat and 


120 


PECK'S BAD BOY. 


vest, and I said a cat met me in the hall and kicked me, and 
Ma cried, and Pa said that boy beats hell, and the minister 
said I would be all right if I had been properly brought up, 
and then Ma was mad, and the committee broke up. Welle 



A YELLOW CAT WITHOUT ANY TAIL WAS WALKING 
OVER THE MINISTER. 


to tell the honest truth. Pa basted me, and yanked me 
around until I had to have my arm in a sling, but what’s the 
use of making such a fuss about a few cats. Ma said she 
never wanted to have my company again, cause I spoiled 


peck’s bad boy. 


I2I 


everything. But I got even with Pa for basting me, this 
morning, and I dassent go home. You see, Ma has got a 
a great big bath sponge as big as a chair cushion, and this 
morning I took the sponge and filled it with warm water, 
and took the feather cushion out of the chair Pa sits in at 
the table, and put the sponge in its place, and covered it 
over with the cushion cover, and when we all got set down 
to the table Pa came in and set down on it to ask a bless 
ing. He started in by ^closing his eyes and placing his 



PA OPENED ONE EYE AND LOOKED AT ME. 

hands up in front of him like a letter V, and then he began 
to ask that the food we were about to partake of be blessed, 
and then he was going on to ask that all of us be made to 
see the error of our ways, when he began to hitch around, 
and he opened one eye and looked at me, and I looked as 
pioui cUi a boy can look when he knows the pancakes are 
getting cold, and Pa he kind of sighed and said ‘Amen ’ sort 
of snappish, and he got up and told Ma he didn’t feel well, 


122 


peck’s bad boy. 


and she would have to take his place and pass around the 
sassidge and potatoes, and he looked kind of scart and went 
out with his hands on his pistol pocket, as though 
he would like to shoot, and Ma she got up and went around 
and sat in Pa’s chair. The sponge didn’t hold more than 
half a pail full of water, and I didn’t want to play no joke 
on Ma, cause the cats nearly broke her up, but she sat down 
and was just going to help me, when she rung the bell and 
called the hired girl, and said she felt as though her nooral- 
gia was coming on, and she would go to her room, and told 
the girl to sit down and help Hennery. The girl sat 
down and poured me out some coffee, and then she said 
‘ Howly Saint Patrick, but I blave those pancakes are burn- 
ing,’ and she went out in the kitchen. I drank my coffee, 
and then took the big sponge out of the chair and put the 
cushion in the place of it, and then I put the sponge in the 
bath room, and I went up to Pa and Ma’s room, and 
asked them if I should go after the doctor, and Pa had 
changed his clothes and got on his Sunday pants, and he 
said, ‘ never mind the doctor, I guess we will pull through,’ 
and for me to get out and go to the devil, and I came over 
here. Say, there is no harm in a little warm water, is there? 
Well, I’d like to know what Pa and Ma and the hired girl 
thought. I am the only real healthy one there is in our 
family.” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


HE BECOMES A DRUGGIST. 

“I have ffone into business!” — A new rose geranium perfume — The 
bad Doy in a druggist’s store — Practicing on his Pa — An explo- 
sion — The seidletz powder — His Pa’s frequent pains — Pounding 
India-Rubber — Curing a wart. 

“Whew! What is that smells so about this store? It 
seems as though everything had turned frowy,” said the 
grocery man to his clerk, in the presence of the bad boy, 
who was standing with his back to the stove, his coat tails 
parted with his hands, and a cigarette in his mouth. 

“May be it is me that smells frowy,” said the boy as he 
put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and spit at the 
keyhole in the door. “ I have gone into business.” 

“ By thunder, I believe it is you,” said the grocery man, 
as he went up to the boy, snuffed a couple of times, and 
then held his hand to his nose. “ The board of health will 
kerosene you, if they ever smell that smell, and send you to 
the glue factory. What business you gone into to make you 
smell so rank?” 

Well, you see Pa began to think it was time I learned 
a trade, or a perfession, and he saw a sign in a drug store 
window, ‘boy wanted,’ and as he had a boy he didn’t want, 
he went to the druggist and got a job forme. This smell on 
me will go off in a few weeks. You know I wanted to try 
all the perfumery in the store, and after I had got about 
forty different extracts on my clothes, another boy that 
worked there he fixed up a bottle of benzine and assafety 
and brimstone, and a whole lot of other horrid stuff, and 

123 


124 


peck’s bad boy. 


labeled it * rose geranium,’ and I guess I just wallered in it. 
It is awful, aint it? It kerflummixed Ma when I went into 
the dining-room the first night that I got home from the 
store, and broke Pa all up. He said I reminded him of the 



I ASKED HER IF THAT WAS WHAT SHE WANTED. 


time that they had a litter of skunks under the barn. The 
air seemed fixed around where I am, and everybody seems 
to know who fixed it. A girl came in the store yesterday to 


peck’s bad boy. 


125 


buy a satchet, and there wasn’t anybody there but me, and 
I didn’t know what it was, and I took down everything in 
the store pretty near before I found it, and then I wouldn’t 
have found it only the proprietor came in. The girl asked 
the proprietor if there wasn’t a good deal of sewer-gas in the 
store, and he told me to go out and shake myself. I think 
the girl was mad at me because I got a nursing bottle out of 
the show case, with a rubber nozzle, and asked her if that 
was what she wanted. Well, she told me a satchet was 
something for the stummick, and I thought a nursing bottle 
was the nearest thing to it.” 

“ I should think you would drive all the customers away 
from the store,” said the grocery man, as he opened the door 
to let the fresh air in. 

“ I don’t know but I will, but I am hired for a month on 
trial, and I shall stay. You see, I shan’t practice on any- 
body but Pa for a spell. I made up my mind to that when I 
gave a woman some salts instead of powdered borax, and 
she came back piad. Pa seems to want to encourage me, 
and is willing to take anything that I ask him to. He had a 
sore throat and wanted something for it, and the boss drug' 
ger told me to put some tannin and chlorate of potash in a 
mortar, and grind it, and I let Pa pound it with the mortar, 
and while he was pounding I dropped in a couple of drops 
of sulphuric acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa’s hat clear 
across the store, and Pa was whiter than a sheet. He said he 
guessed his throat was all right, and he wouldn’t come near 
me again that day. The next day Pa came in and I was lay- 
ing for him. I took a white seidletz powder and a blue one, 
and dissolved them in separate glasses, and when Pa came in 
I asked him if he didn’t want some lemonade, and he said he 
did, and I gave him the sour one and he drank it. He said 
it was too sour, and then I gave him the other glass, that 
looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he 


126 


peck's bad boy. 


drank it. Well, sir, when those two powders got together 
in Pa’s stummick, and began to siz and steam, and foam, Pa 
pretty near choked to death, and the suds came out of his 
nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and as soon as he could get 
his breath he yelled ‘fire,’ and said he was poisoned, and 
called for a doctor, but P thought as long as we had a doc- 
tor right in the family there was no use of hiring one, so I 
got a stomach pump, and I would have had him baled out 
in no time, only the proprietor came in and told me to go 
and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of brandy, 
and Pa said he felt better. Pa has learned where we keep 
the liquor, and he comes in two or three times a day with 
a pain in his stomach. They play awful mean tricks on a boy 
in a drug store. The first day they put a chunk of something 
sort of blue into a mortar, and told me to pulverize it, and 
then make it up into two grain pills. Well, sir, I pounded 
that chunk all the forenoon, and it never pulverized at all, 

and the boss told me to 
hurry up, as the woman 
was waiting for the pills, 
and I mauled it till I 
was nearly dead, and 
when it was time to go 
to supper the boss came 
and looked in the mor 
tar, and took out the 
chunk, and said, ‘You 
dum fool, you have been 
pounding all day on a 
chunk of India-rubber, 

WELL, I POUNDED THAT CHUNK ALL DAY. 

Well, how did I know? But I will get even with them if I 
stay there long enough, and don’t you forget it. If you 
have a prescription you want filled you can come down to 



peck’s bad boy. 127 

the store and I will put it up for you myself, and then you 
will be sure you get what you pay for.” 

“Yes,” said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of 
limberg cheese and put it on the stove, to purify the air in the 
room. “ I should laugh to see myself taking any medicine 
you put up. You will kill some one yet by giving them 
poison instead of quinine. But what has your Pa got his 
nose tied up for? He looks as though he had had a fight.” 

“ O, that was from my treatment. He had a wart on his 
nose. You know that wart. You remember how the minis- 
ter told him if other people’s business had a button-hole in it. 
Pa could button the wart in the button-hole, as he always 
had his nose there. Well, I told Pa I could cure that wart 
with caustic, and he said he woufd give five dollars if I 
could cure it, so I took a stick of caustic and burned the 
wart off, but I guessed I burned down into the nose a little, 
for it swelled up as big as a lobster. Pa says he would 
rather have a whole nest of warts than such a nose, but it 
will be all right in a year or two.” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


HE QUITS 'the drug BUSINESS. 

He has dissolved with the drugger — The old lady and the gin — The 
bad boy ignominiously fired — How he dosed his pa’s brandy — The 
bad boy as “hawty as a dook” — He gets even with his girl — The 
bad boy wants a quiet place — The old man threatens the parson. 

“ What are you loafing around here for,” says the gro- 
cery man to the bad boy one day this week. “ It is after 
nine o’clock, and I should think you would want to be down 
to the drug store. How do you know but there may be 
somebody dying for a dose of pills?” 

“ O, darn the drug store. I have got sick of that busi- 
ness, and I have dissolved with the drugger. I have re- 
signed. The policy of the store did not meet with my 
approval, and I have stepped out and am waiting for them 
to come and tender me a better position at an increased 
salary,” said the boy, as he threw a cigar stub into a barrel 
of prunes and lit a fresh one. 

“ Resigned, eh ? ” said the grocery man as he fished out 
the cigar stub and charged the boys father with two ‘ pound 
of prunes, “ didn’t you and the boss agree ? ” 

“Not exactly, I gave an old lady some gin when she- 
asked for camphor and water, and she made a show of her- 
self. I thought I would fool her, but she knew mighty well 
what it was, and she drank about half a pint of gin, and got 
to tipping over bottles and kegs of paint, and when the drug 
man came in with his wife, the old lady threw her arms 
around his neck and called him her darling, and when he 
pushed her away, and told her she was drunk, she picked up 

123 


peck's bad boy. 


129 


a bottle of citrate of magnesia and pointed it at him, and the 
cork came out like a pistol, and he thought he was shot, and 
his wife fainted away, and the police came and took the old 
gin refrigerator away, and the drug man told me to face the 
door, and when I wasn’t looking he kicked me four times, 



THEN THE DRUG MAN TOLD ME TO FACE THE DOOR 


and I landed in the street, and he said if I ever came in sight 
of the store again he would kill me dead. That is the way 
I resigned. I tell you, they will send for me again. They 

never can run that store without me.” 

9 


130 


peck’s bad boy. 


“ I guess they will worry along without you,” said the 
grocery man. “ How does your Pa take your being fired out? 
I should think it would break him all up.” 

” O, I think Pa rather likes it. At first he thought he had 
a soft snap with me in the drug store, cause he has got to 
drinking again like a fish, and he has gone back on, the 
church entirely; but after I had put a few things in his brandy 
he concluded it was cheaper to buy it, and he is now 
patronizing a barrel house down by the river. 

“ One day I put some castile soap in a drink of brandy, 
and Pa leaned over the back fence more than an hour, with 
his finger down his throat. The man that collects the ashes 
from the ally asked Pa if he had lost anything, and Pa said 
he was only ‘sugaring off.‘ I don’t know what that is. 
When Pa felt better he came in and wanted a little whisky 
to take the taste out of his mouth, and I gave him some with 
about a teaspoonful of pulverized alum in it. Well sir, you’d 
a dide. Pa’s mouth and throat was so puckered up, that he 
couldn’t talk. I don’t think the drug man will make any 
thing by firing me out, because I shall turn all the trade that 
I control to another store. Why sir, sometimes there were 
eight and nine girls in the store all at wonct, on account of my 
being there. They came to have me put extracts on their 
handkerchiefs and to eat gum-drops; he will lose all that trade 
now. My girl that went back on me for the telegraph mes- 
senger boy, she came with the rest of the girls, but she 
found that I could be as ‘hawty as a dook.* I got even with 
her, though. I pretended I wasn’t mad, and when she wan- 
ted me to put some perfumery on her handkerchief I said all 
right, and I put on a little geranium and white rose, and then 
I got some tincture of assafety, and sprinkled it on her dress 
and cloak when she went out. That is about the worst 
smelling stuff that ever was, and I was glad when she went 
out and met the telegraph boy on the corner. They went 


peck’s bad boy. 


I3I 

off together, but he come back pretty soon, about the 
homesickest boy you ever saw, and he told my chum he 
would never go with that girl again because she smelled like 
spoiled oysters or sewer gas. Her folks noticed it, and 
made her go and wash her feet and soak herself, and her 
brother told my chum it didn’t do any good, she smelled 
just like a glue factory, and my chum — the darn fool — 
told her brother that it was me who perfumed her, and he 
hit me in the eye with a frozen fish, down by the fish store, 
and that’s what made my eye black; but I know how to 
cure a black eye. I have not been in a drug store eight 
days, and not know how to cure a black eye, and I guess I 
learned that girl not to go back on a boy ’cause he smelled 
like a goat.” 

“ Well, what was it about your leaving the wrong medi- 
cine at houses? The policeman in this ward told me you 
come pretty near killing several people by leaving the 
wrong medicine.” 

“The way of it was this. There was about a dozen 
different kinds of medicine to leave at different places, and 
I was in a hurry to go to the roller skating rink, so I got my 
chum to help me, and we just took the numbers of the 
houses, and when we rung the bell we would hand out the 
first' package we come to, and I understand there was a good 
deal of complaint. One old maid who ordered powder for 
her face, her ticket drew some worm lozengers, and she 
kicked awfully,, and a widow who was going to be married, 
she ordered a celluloid comb and brush, and she got a 
nursing bottle with a rubber nozzle, and a toothing ring, 
and she made quite a fuss; but the woman who was wean- 
ing her baby and wanted the nursing bottle, she got the 
comb and brush and some blue pills, and she never made 
any fuss at all. It makes a good deal of difference, I no- 
tice, whether a person gets a better thing than they ordered 


132 


pfxk's bad boy. 


or not. But the drug business is too lively for me. I have 
got to have a quiet place, and I guess I will be a cash boy 
in a store. Pa says he thinks I was cut out for a bunko 
steerer, and I may look for that kind of a job. Pa he is a 
terror since he got to drinking again. He came home the 
other day, when the minister was calling on Ma, and just 
cause the minister was sitting on the sofa with Ma, and had 
his hand on her shoulder, where she said the pain was when 



PA WAS MAD JUST BECAUSE THE MINISTER HAD HIS HAND ON 
HER SHOULDERS. 


the rheumatiz came on. Pa was mad and told the minister 
he would kick his liver clear around on the other side if he 
caught him there again, and Ma felt awful about it. After 
the minister had gone away, Ma told Pa he had got no 
feeling at all, and Pa said he had got enough feeling for 
one family, and he didn’t want no sky-sharp to help him. 


peck’s bad boy. 


133 


He said he could cure all the rheumatiz there was around 
his house, and then he went down town and didn’t get 
home till most breakfast time. Ma says she thinks I am 
responsible for Pa’s falling into bad ways again, and now 
I am going to cure him. You watch me, and see if I don’t 
have Pa in the church in less than a week, praying and 
singing, and going home with the choir singers, just as pious 
as ever. I am going to get a boy that writes a woman’s 
hand to write to Pa, and — but I must not give it away. 
But you just watch Pa, that’s all. Well, I must go and saw 
some wood. It is coming down a good deal, from a drug 
clerk to sawing wood, but I will get on top yet, and don’t 
you forget it.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 


HIS PA KILLS HIM. 

A genius at whistling — A fur-lined cloak a sure cure for consumption — 
Another letter sent to the old man— He resolves on immediate pun- 
ishment — The bladder-buffer — The explosion — A tragic scene— His 
Pa vows to reform. 

“ For heaven’s sake dry up that whistling,” said the gro- 
cery man to the bad boy, as he sat on a bag of peanuts, 
whistling and filling his pockets. “There is no sense in such 
whistling. What do you whistle for, anyway? ” 

“ I am practicing my profession,” said the boy, as he got 
up and stretched himself, and cut off a slice of cheese, and 
took a few crackers. “ I have always been a good whistler, 
and I have decided to turn my talent to account. I am go- 
ing to hire an office and put out a sign, ‘ Boy furnished to 
whistle for lost dogs.’ You see there are dogs lost every 
day, and any man would give half a dollar to a boy to find 
his dog. I can hire out to whistle for dogs, and can go 
around whistling and enjoying myself, and make money. 
Don’t yoii think it a good scheme?” asked the boy of the 
grocery man. 

“ Naw,” said the grocery man, as he charged the cheese 
to the boy’s father, and picked up his cigar stub, which he 
had left on the counter, and which the boy had rubbed on 
the kerosene barrel. “ No, sir, the whistle would scare any 
dog that heard it. Say, what was your Pa running after the 
doctor in his shirt sleeves for last Sunday morning? He 
looked scared. Was your Ma sick again?” 

“ O, no, Ma is healthy enough, now she has got a new 

134 


peck’s bad boy. 


135 


fur-lined cloak. She played consumption on Pa, and 
coughed so she liked to raise her lights and liver, and made 
Pa believe she couldn’t live, and got the doctor to pre- 
scribe a fur-lined circular, and Pa went and got one, and 
Ma has improved awfully. Her cough is all gone, and she 
can walk ten miles. I was the one that was sick. You see, 
I wanted to get Pa into the church again, and get him to 
stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to him, in 
a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was 
mashed on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come 
back to the church, and that the church seemed blank with- 
out his smiling face, and benevolent heart, and to please 
come back for her sake. Pa got the letter Saturday night 
and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed about it all 
night, and Sunday morning he was mad, and he took me by 
the ear and said I couldn’t come no ‘Daisy’ business on 
him the second time. He said he knew I wrote the letter, 
and for me to go up to the store room and prepare for the 
almightiest licking a boy ever had, and he went down stairs 
and broke up an apple barrel and got a stave to whip me 
with. Well, I had to think mighty quick, but I was enough 
for him. I got a dried bladder in my room, one that me 
and my chum got to the slaughter house, and blowed it 
partly up, so it would be sort of flat-like, and I put it down 
inside of the back part of my pants, right about where Pa 
hits when he punishes me. I knowed when the barrel stave 
hit the bladder it would explode. Well, Pa he came up and 
found me crying. I can cry just as easy as you can turn on 
water at the faucet, and Pa took off his coat and looked 
sorry. I was afraid he would give up whipping me when he 
see me cry, and I wanted the bladder experiment to go on, 
so I looked kind of hard, as if I was defying him to do his 
worst, and then he took me by the neck and laid me across 
a trunk. I didn’t dare struggle much for fear the bladder 


would loose itself, and Pa said, ‘ Now Hennery, I am going 
to break you of this damfoolishness, or I will break your 
back,’ and he spit on his hands and brought the barrel stave 
down on my best pants. Well, you’d a dide' if you had 
heard the explosion. It almost knocked me off the trunk. 

It sounded like firing a fire- 
cracker away down cellar in 
a barrel, and Pa looked scared. 
I rolled off the trunk, on the 
floor, and put some flour on 
my face, to make me look pale, 



PA SAID, “NOW HENNERY. 


and then I kind of kicked my legs like a fellow who is dying 
on the stage, after being stabbed with a piece of lath, and 
groaned, and said, ‘ Pa you have killed me, but I forgive 
you,’ and then rolled around, and frothed at the mouth, cause 


peck’s bad boy. 


137 


I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make foam. Well, 

Pa was broken up. He said, ‘Great God, what have I done? 

I have broke his spinal column. O, my poor boy, do not 
die!’ I kept chewing the soap and foaming at the mouth, 
and I drew up my legs and kicked and clutched my hair, and 
rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the stummick as he 
bent over me, and knocked his breath out of him, and then 
my limbs began to get rigid, and I said, ‘ Too late, Pa, I die at ’’ \ 

the hand of an assassin. Go for a doctor.’ Pa throwed his 
coat over me, and started down stairs on a run, ‘ I have mur- 
dered my brave boy,’ and he told Ma to go up stairs and stay 
with me, cause I had fallen off a trunk and ruptured a blood 
vessel, and he went after a doctor. When he went out the 
fronUdoor, I sat up and lit a cigarette, and Ma came up and 
I told her all about how I fooled Pa, and if she would take 
on and cry, when Pa got back, I would get him to go to 
church again, and swear off drinking and she said she would. 

“ So when Pa and the doc. came back, Ma was sitting on a 
velocipede I used to ride, which was in the store-room, and 
she had her apron over her face, and she just more than bel- 
lowed. J’a he was pale, and he told the doc. he was just 
playing with me with a little piece of board, and he heard 
something crack, and he guessed my spine got broke falling 
off the trunk. The doctor wanted to feel where my spine 
was broke, but I opened my eyes and had a vacant kind of 
stare, like a woman who leads a dog by a string, and looked 
as though my mind was wandering, and I told the doctor 
there was no use setting my spine, as it was broke in several 
places, and I wouldn’t let him feel of the dried bladder. I 
told Pa I was going to die, and I wanted him to promise me 
two things on my dying bed. He cried and said he would, 
and I told him to promise me he would quit drinking, and 
attend church regular, and he said he would never drink 
another drop, and would go to church every Sunday. I 


peck’s bad boy. 


138 

made him get down on his knees beside me and swear it, and 
the doc. witnessed it, and Ma said she was so glad, and Ma 
called the doctor out in the hall and told him the joke, and the 
doc. came in and told Pa he was afraid Pa’s presence would 
excite the patient, and for him to put on his coat and go out 
and walk around the block, or go to church, and Ma and he 
would remove me to another room, and do all that was possi- 
ble to make my last hours pleasant. Pa he cried and said he 
would put on his plug hat and go to church, and he kissed me 
and got flour on his nose, and I came near laughing right out, 
to see the white flour on his red nose, when I thought how the 
people in church would laugh at Pa. But he went out feel- 
ing mighty bad, and then I got up and pulled the bladder 
out of my pants, and Maand the doc. laughed awful. When 
Pa got back from church and asked for me, Ma said that I 
had gone down town. She said the doctor found my spine 
was only uncoupled and he coupled it together, and I was 
all right. Pa said it was ‘ almighty strange, cause I heard 
the spine break, when I struck him with the barrel stave.’ 
Pa was nervous all the afternoon, and Ma thinks he suspects 
that we played it on him. Say, you don’t think tj^ere is any 
harm in playing it on an old man a little for a good cause, 
do you?” 

The grocery man said he supposed, in the interest of re- 
form, it was all right, but if it was his boy that played such 
tricks he would take an ax to him, and the boy went out, 
apparently encouraged, saying he hadn’t seen the old man 
since the day before, and he was almost afraid to meet him. 


CHAPTER XXVL 


HIS PA MORTIFIED. 

Searching for sewer gas — The powerful odor of limberger cheese at 
church — The after meeting — Fumigating the house — The bad boy 
resolves to board at an hotel. 

“What was the health officer doing over to your house 
this morning ?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the 
youth was firing frozen potatoes at the man who collects 
garbage in the alley. 

“O, they are searching for sewer gas and such things, 
and they have got plumbers and other society experts till 
you can’t rest, and I came away for fear they would find the 
sewer gas and warm my jacket. Say, do you think it is 
right, when anything smells awfully, to always lay it to a 
boy?” 

“Well, in nine cases out of ten they would hit it right, 
but what do you think is the trouble over to your house, 
honest ?” 

“S-h-h ! Now don’t breathe a word of it to a living soul, 
or I am a dead boy. You see I was over to the dairy fair 
at the exposition building Saturday night, and when they 
were breaking up, me and my chum helped to carry boxes 
of cheese and firkins of butter, and a cheese-man gave each 
of us a piece of limberger cheese, wrapped up in tin foil. 
Sunday niorning I opened my piece, and it made me tired. 
O, it was the offulest smell I ever heard of, except the smell 
when they found a tramp who hung himself in the woods 
on the Whitefish Bay road, and had been dead three weeks. 

130 


140 


peck’s bad boy. 


It was just like a old back number funeral. Pa and Ma 
were just getting ready to go to church, and I cut off a piece 
of cheese and put it in the inside pocket of Pa’s vest, and I 
put another in the lining of Ma’s muff, and they went to 
church. I went down to church, too, and sat on a back 
seat with my chum, looking just as pious as though I was 
taking up a collection. The church was pretty warm, 
and by the time they got up to sing the first hymn Pa’s 
cheese began to smell a match against Ma’s cheese. Pa held 
one side of the hymn book and Ma held the other, and Pa 
he always sings for all that is out, and, when he braced him- 
self and sang “Just as I am,” Ma thought Pa’s voice was 
tinctured a little with biliousness and she looked at him, and 
hunched him and told him to stop singing and breathe 
through his nose, cause his breath was enough to stop a 
clock. Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross 
towards Ma, and then he smelled Ma’s cheese, and he turned 
his head the other way and said, ‘whew,’ and they didn’t sing 
anymore, but they looked at each other as though they 
smelled frowy. When they sat down they sat as far apart 
as they could get, and Pa sat next to a woman who used to 
be a nurse in a hospital, and when she smelled Pa’s cheese 
she looked at him as though she thought he hed the small- 
pox, and she held her handkerchief to her nose. The man 
in the other end of the pew, that Ma sat near, he was a 
stranger from Racine, who belongs to our church, and he 
looked at Ma sort of queer, and after the minister prayed, 
and they got up to sing again, the man took his hat and 
went out, and when he came by me he said something in a 
whisper about a female glue factory. 

“Well, sir, before the sermon was over everybody in that 
part of the church had their handkerchiefs to thqir noses, 
and they looked at Pa and Ma scandalous, and the two ush- 
ers they come around in the pews looking for a dog, and 


peck’s bad boy. 


141 


when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the per- 
spiration off his face, he said he would like to have the 
trustees of the church stay after meeting, as there was some 
business of importance to transact. He said the question of 



HE SAID HE WAS A WEAK AND HUMBLE FOLLOWER OF THE LAMB. 

he presumed the congregation had noticed this morning 
that the church was unusually full of sewer gas. He 
said he had spoken of the matter before, and he ex- 
pected it would be attended to before this. He said 
he was a meek and humble follower of the lamb, and 


142 


peck’s bad boy. 


was willing to cast his lot wherever the Master decided, but 
he would be blessed if he would preach any longer in a 
church that smelled like a bone boiling establishment. He 
said religion was a good thing, but no person could enjoy 
religion as well in a fat rending establishment as he could in 
a flower garden, and as far as he was concerned he had got 
enough. Everybody looked at everybody else, and Pa 
looked at Ma as though he knew where the sewer gas came 
from, and Ma looked at Pa real mad, and me and my chum 
lit out, and I went home and distributed my cheese all around. 
I put a slice in Ma’s bureau drawer, down under her under- 
clothes, and a piece in the spare room, under the bed, and a 
piece in the spare room, under the bed and a piece in the 
bath-room in the soap-dish, and a slice in the album on the 
parlor table, and a piece in the library in a book, and I went 
to the dining-room and put some under the table, and 
dropped a piece under the range in the kitchen. I tell you the 
house was loaded for bear. Ma came home from church 
first, and when I asked where Pa was, she said she hoped he 
had gone to walk around a block to air hisself. Pa came 
home to dinner, and when he got a smell of the house he 
opened all the doors, and Ma put a comfortable around her 
shoulders and told Pa he was a disgrace to civilization. She 
tried to get Pa to drink some carbolic acid. Pa finally con- 
vinced Ma it was not him, and then they decided it was the 
house that smelled so, as well as the church, and all Sunday 
afternoon they went visiting, and this morning Pa went down 
to the health office and got the inspector of nuisances to 
come up to the house, and when he smelled around a spell 
he said there was dead rats in the main sewer pipe, and they 
sent for plumbers, and Ma went out to a neighbors to 
borry some fresh air, and when the plumbers began to dig 
up the floor in the basement I came over here. If they find 
any of that limberg cheese it will go hard with me. The 


peck’s bad boy. 


143 


hired girls have both quit, and Ma says she is going to break 
up keeping house and board. That is just into my hand. I 
want to board at a hotel, where you can have bill-of-fare 
and tooth picks, and billiards, and everything. Well I guess 
I will go over to the house and stand in the back door and 
listen to the mocking bird. If you see me come flying out 
of the alley with my coat tail full of boots you can bet they 
have discovered the sewer gas.” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


HIS PA BROKE UP. 

The bad boy don’t think the grocer fit for heaven — He is very severe on 
his old friend — The need of a new revised edition— The bad boy 
turns reviser — His pe. reaches for the poker — A special providence — 
The sled slewed! — His pa under the mules. 

“ Well, I guess I will go to hell. I will see you later,” 
said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he held a cracker 
under the faucet of the syrup keg, and then sat down on a 
soap box by the stove and proceeded to make a lunch, while 
the grocery man charged the boy’s father with a gallon of 
syrup and a pound of crackers. 

“ What do you mean, you profane wretch, talking about 
meeting me later in Hades,” said the indignant grocery man. 
“ I expect to pass by the hot place where you are sizzling, and 
go to the realms of bliss, where there is one continued round 
of happiness, and angels playing on golden harps and sing- 
ing hymns of praise.” 

“Why, Pa says I will surely go to hell, and, I thought 
you would probably be there, as it costs something to get to 
heaven, and you can get to the other place for nothing. 
Say, you would be a healthy delegate to go to heaven, with 
a lot of girl angels, wouldn’t you, smelling of frowy butter, 
as you always do, and kerosene, and herring, and bar soap, 
and cheese, and rotten potatoes. Say, an angel wouldn’t 
stay on the same golden street with you, without holding her 
handkerchief to her nose, and you couldn’t get in there, any- 
way, cause you would want to pay your entrance fee out of 
the store.” 


144 


PECK^S BAD BOY. 


145 


“ Say, you get out of here, condemn you. You are get- 
ting sassy. There is no one that is more free hearted than 
I am,” said the grocery man. 

” O, give us a siesta. I am on to you bigger than an 
elevator. When they had the oyster sociable at the church 
you gave four pounds of musty crackers with worms in, and 
they tasted of kerosene, and when the minister prayed for 
those who had generously contributed to the sociable, you 
raised up your head as though you wanted them all to know 
he meant you. If a man can get to heaven on four pounds 
of musty crackers, done up in a paper that has been around 
mackerel, then what’s the use of a man being good, and 
giving sixteen ounces to the pound? But, there, don’t 
blush and cry. I will use my influence to get your feet onto 
the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, but you have 
got to. quit sending those small potatoes to our house, 
with a few big ones on top of the basket. I’ll tell you 
how it was that Pa told me I would go to hell. You 
see Pa has been reading out of an old back number 
bible, and Ma and me argued with him about getting a new 
revised edition. We told him that the old one was all out 
of style, and that all the neighbors had the newest cut in 
bibles, with dolman sleeves, and gathered in the back, and 
they put on style over us, and we could not hold up our 
heads in society when it was known that we were wearing 
the old last year’s bible. Pa kicked against it, but finally 
got one. I thought I had as much right to change things in 
the revised bible, as the other fellows had to change the old 
one, so I pasted some mottoes and patent-medicine adver- 
tisements in it, after the verses. Pa never reads a whole 
chapter, but reads a verse or two and skips around. Before 
breakfast, the other morning, Pa got the new bible and 
started to read the ten commandments and some other 


10 


146 peck’s bad boy. 

things. The first thing Pa struck was, ‘Verily I say unto 
you, try St. Jacob’s oil for rheumatism.’ Pa looked over his 
specs at Ma, and then looked at me, but I had my face 
covered with my hands, sort of pious. Pa said he didn’t 
think it was just the thing to put advertisements in the 
bible, but Ma said she didn’t know as it was any worse 
than to have a patent medicine notice next to Beecher’s ser- 
mon in the religious paper. Pa sighed and turned over a 
few leaves, and read, ‘ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s 

wife, nor his - ox, if 
you love me as I love 
you no knife can cut 
our love in two. ’That 
last part was a motto 
that I got out of a 
paper of candy. Pa 
said that the senti- 
ment was good, but 
he didn’t think the 
revisers had improved 
the old command- 
ment very much. 
Then Pa turned over 
and read, ‘Take a lit- 
tle wine for the stom- 
ach’s sake, and keep 
a bottle of Reed’s 
Gilt Edged tonic on 
your side-board, and 
you can defy malaria, 
and chills and fever.’ 
Pa was hot. He looked at it again, and noticed that the tonic 
commandment was on yellow paper, and the corner curled 
up, and Pa took hold of it, and the paste that I stuck it on 



PA FOLLOWED ME AS FAR AS THE 
SIDEWALK. 


peck’s bad boy. 


147 


with was not good, and it come off, and when I saw Pa lay 
down the bible, and put his spectacles in the case, and reach 
for the fire poker, I knew he was not going to pray, and I 
looked out the window and yelled dog fight, and I lit out, and 
Pa followed me as far as the sidewalk, and it was that morning 
when it was so slippery, and Pa’s feet slipped out from under 
him, and he stood on his neck, and slid around on his ear, 
and the special providence of sleet on the sidewalk saved 
me. Say, do you believe in special providence? What was 
the use of that sleet on the sidewalk, if it was not to save 
sinners?” 

”0, I don’t know anything about special providence,”’ said 
the grocery man, “ but I know you have got two of your 
pockets filled with them boneless raisins since you have been 
talking, and my opinion is you will steal. But, say, what is 
your Pa on crutches for? I see him hobbling down town 
this morning. Has he sprained his ankle? ” 

“ Well, I guess his ankle got sprained with all the 
rest. You see, my chum and me went bobbing, and 
pa said he supposed he used to be the greatest bob- 
ber, when he was a boy, that ever was. He said he 
used to slide down a hill that was steeper than a church 
steeple. We asked him to go with us, and we went to that 
street that goes down by the depot, and we had two sleds 
hitched together, and there were more’n a hundred boys, and 
Pa wanted to steer, and he got on the front sled, and when we 
got about half way down the sled slewed, and my chum and 
me got off all right, but Pa got shut up between the tw^o 
sleds, and the other boys behind they all run over Pa and 
one sled runner caught him in the trousers’ leg, and dragged 
him over the slippery ice clear to the bottom, and the whole 
lay-out run into the street car, and the mules got wild and 
kicked, and Pa’s suspenders broke, and when my chum and 
me got down there was Pa under the car, and a boy’s boots 


48 


peck’s bad boy. 


was in Pa’s shirt bosom, and another boy was straddle of 
Pa’s neck, and the crowd rushed up from the depot, and got 
Pa oyt, and began to yell ‘ fire,’ and ‘ police,’ and he kicked 
at a boy that was trying to get his sled out of the small of 
Pa’s back, and a policeman came along and pushed Pa and 
said, ‘ Go away from here, ye owld divil, and let the b’ys 
enjoy themselves;’ and he was going to arrest Pa, when me 



ONE SLED RUNNER CAUGHT HIM IN THE TROUSERS* LEG. 


and my chum told him we would take Pa home. Pa said 
the hill was not steep enough for him or he wouldn’t have 
fell off. He is offul stiff to-day, but he says he will go 
skating with us next week, and show us how to skate. Pa 
means well, but he don’t realize that he is getting stiff and 
can’t be as kitteny as he used to be. He is very kind to me, 


peck's bad boy. 


149 


If I had some fathers I would have been a broken-backed, 
disfigured angel long ago, Don’t you think so?” 

The grocery man said he was sure of it, and the boy got 
out with his boneless raisins, and pocket full of lump sugar. 



t 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 


HIS PA GOES SKATING. 

The bad boy carves a turkey — His Pa’s fame as a skater — The old man 
essays to skate on rollers — His wild capers — He spreads himself — 
Holidays a condemned nuisance — The bad boy’s Christmas 
presents. 

“ What is that stuff on your shirt bosom, that looks like 
soap grease?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he 
came into the grocery the morning after Christmas. 

The boy looked at his shirt front, put his fingers on the 
stuff and smelled of his fingers, and then said, “O, that is 
nothing but a little of the turkey dressing and gravy. You 
see after Pa and I got back from the roller skating rink 
yesterday. Pa was all broke up, and he couldn’t carve the 
turkey, and I had to do it, and Pa sat in a stuffed chair with 
his head tied up and a pillow amongst his legs, and he kept 
complaining that I didn’t do it right. Gol darn a turkey 
any way. I should think they would make a turkey flat on 
the back, so he would lay on a greasy platter without skat- 
ing all around the table. It looks easy to see Pa carve a 
turkey, but when I speared into the bosom of that turkey, 
and began to saw on it, the turkey rolled around ^s though 
it was on castors, and it was all that I could do to keep it 
out of Ma’s lap. But I rasseled with it till I got off enough 
white meat for Pa and Ma, and dark meat enough for me, 
and I dug out the dressing, but most of it flew into my 
shirt bosom, cause the string that tied up the place where 
the dressing was concealed about the person of the turkey, 

150 


peck’s bad boy. 


I5I 


broke prematurely, and one oyster hit Pa in the eye, and he 
said I was as awkward as a cross-eyed girl trying to kiss a 
man with a hair lip. If I ever get to be the head of a fami- 
ly I shall carve turkeys with a corn sheller.” 

“ But what broke your Pa up at the roller skating rink?” 
asked the grocery man. 

” O, everything broke him up. He is split up so Ma but- 
tons the top of his pants to his collar button, like a bicycle 
rider. Well, he had no business to have told me and my chum 
that he used to be the best skater in North America, when he 
was a boy. He said he skated once from Albany to New 
York in an hour and eighty minutes. Me and my chum 
thought that if Pa was such a terror on skates we could get 
him to put on a pair of roller skates, and enter him as the 
‘ great unknown,’ and clean out the whole gang. We told 
Pa that he must remember that roller skates were different 
from ice skates, and that maybe he couldn’t skate on them, but 
he said it didn’t make any difference what they were as long as 
they were skates, and he would just paralyze the whole crowd. 
So we got a pair of big roller skates for him, and while we 
were strapping them on. Pa he looked at the skaters glide 
around on the smooth wax floor just as though they were 
greased. Pa looked at the skates on his feet, after they 
were fastened, sort of forlorn like, the way a horse thief 
does when they put shackles on his legs, and I told him if 
he was afraid he couldn’t skate with them, we would take 
them off, but he said he would beat anybody there was 
there, or bust a suspender. Then we straightened Pa up, 
and pointed him toward the middle of the room, and he 
said ‘ leggo,’ and we just give him a little push to start him, 
and he began to go. Weil, by gosh, you’d a dide to have 
seen Pa try to stop. You see, you can’t stick in your heel 
and stop, like you can on ice skates, and Pa soon found 
that out, and he began to turn sideways, and then he threw 


152 


peck’s bad boy. 


his arms and walked on his heels, and he lost his hat, and 
his eyes began to stick out, cause he was going right 
toward an iron post. One arm caught the post, and he 
circled around it a few times, and then he let go and began 
to fall, and sir, he kept falling all across the room, and 



everybody got out of the way, except a girl, and Pa grabbed 
her by the polonaise, like a drowning man grabs at straws, 
though there wasn’t any straws in her polonaise as I know 
of, but Pa just pulled her along as though she was done up in 


peck's bad boy. 


153 


shawl-strap, and his feet went out from under him and he 
struck on his shoulders and kept a going, with the girl drag- 
ging along like a bundle of clothes. If Pa had had another 
pairof rollerskates on his shoulders, and castors on his ears, 
he couldn’t have slid along any better. Pa is a short, big 
man, and as he was rolling along on his back, he looked like 
a sofa with castors on, being pushed across the room by a 
girl. Finally Pa came to the wall and had to stop, and the 
girl fell right across him with her roller skates in his neck, 
and she called him an old brute, and told him if he didn’t 
let go of her polonaise she would murder him. Just then 
my chum and me got there, and we amputated Pa from the 
girl, and lifted him up and told him for heaven’s sake to let 
us take off the skates, ’cause he couldn’t skate any more 
than a cow, and Pa was mad and said for us to let him alone, 
and he could skate all right, and we let go, and he struck 
out again. Well, sir, I was ashamed. An old man like Pa 
ought to know better than to try to be a boy. This last 
time Pa said he was going to spread himself, and if I am 
any judge of a big spread, he did spread himself. Somehow 
the skates had got turned around sideways on his feet; and 
his feet got to going in different directions, and Pa’s 
feet were getting so far apart that I was afraid I would have 
two Pa’s, half the size, with one leg apiece. 

“ I tried to get him to take up a collection of his legs, 
and get them both in the same ward but his arms flew around 
and one hit me on the nose, and I thought if he wanted to 
strike the best friend he had, he could run his old legs his- 
self. When he began to separate I could hear the bones 
crack, but maybe it was his pants, but anyway he came 
down on the floor like one of those fellows in a circus who 
spreads hisself, and he kept going and finally he surrounded 
an iron post with his legs, and stopped, and looked pale, and 
the proprietor of the rink told Pa if he wanted to give a fly- 




^54 


peck’s bad boy. 


ing trapeze performance he would have to go to the gym- 
nasium, and he couldn’t skate on his shoulders any more, 
cause other skaters were afraid of him. Then Pa said he 
would kick the liver out of the proprietor of the rink, and he 
got up and steadied himself, and he tried to kick the man, 
but both heels went up to onct, and Pa turned a back som- 



I GUESS IT KNOCKED THE BREATH OUT OF HIM. 


ersault and struck right on his vest in front. I guess it 
knocked the breath out of him, for he didn’t speak for a few 
minutes, and then he wanted to go home, and we put him in 
a street car, and he laid down on the hay and rode home. 
O, the work we had to get Pa’s clothes off. He had cricks 


peck’s bad boy. 


155 


in his back, and everywhere, and Ma was away to one of the 
neighbors, to look at the presents, and I had to put lini- 
ment on Pa, and I made a mistake and got a bottle of fur- 
niture polish, and put it on Pa and rubbed it in, and when 
Ma came home. Pa smelled like a coffin at a charity funeral, 
and Ma said there was no way of getting that varnish off 
of Pa till it wore off. Pa says holidays are a condemned nui- 
sance anyway. He will have to stay in the house all this 
week.” 

“ You are pretty rough on the old man,” said the grocery 
man, “after he has been so kind to you and given you nice 
presents.” 

“Nice presents nothin. All I got was a ‘Come to Jesus’ 
Christmas card, with brindle fringe, from Ma, and Pa gave 
me a pair of his old suspenders, and a calender with mottoes 
for every month, some quotations from scripture, such as 
‘honor thy father and thy mother,’ and ‘evil communications 
corrupt two in the bush,’ and ‘a bird in the hand beats two 
pair.’ Such things don’t help a boy to be good. What a 
boy wants is club skates, and seven shot revolvers, and such 
things. Well, I must go and help Pa roll over in bed, and 
put on a new porous plaster. Good-bye.” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


HIS PA GOES CALLING. 

His pa starts forth — A picture of the old man “full” — Politeness at 
a winter picnic — Assaulted by sandbaggers — Resolved to drink no 
more coffee — A girl full of “ aig-nogg.” 

“Say, you are getting too all-fired smart,” said the grocery 
man to the bad boy as he pushed him into a corner by the 
molasses barrel, and took him by the neck and choked him 
so his eyes stuck out. “You have driven away several of 
my best customers, and now, confound you, I am going to 
have your life,” and he took up a cheese knife and began 
to sharpen it on his boot. 

“What’s the — gurgle — matter,” asked the choking boy, 
as the grocery man’s fingers let up on his throat a little, so 
he could speak. “ I hain’t done nothin.” 

“Didn’t you hang up that dead gray Tom cat by the 
heels, in front of my store, with the rabbits I had for sale? 
I didn’t notice it until the minister called me out in front of 
the store, and pointing to the rabbits, asked what good fat 
cats were selling for. By crimus, this thing has got to stop. 
You have got to move out of this ward or I will.” 

The boy got his breath and said it wasn’t him that put 
the cat up there. He said it was the policeman, and he and 
his chum saw him do it, and he just come in to tell the 
grocery man about it, and before he could speak he had his 
neck nearly pulled off. The boy began to cry, and the 
grocery man said he was only joking, and gave him a box 
of sardines, and they made up. Then he asked the boy 

156 


peck’s bad boy. 


157 

how his Pa put in his New Years, and the boy sighed and 
said: 

“We had a sad time at our house New Years. Pa insisted 
on making calls, and Ma and me tried to prevent it, but he 
said he was of age, and guessed he could make calls if he 
wanted to, so he looked at the morning paper and got the 
names of all the places where they were going to receive, 
and he turned his paper collar, and changed ends with his 
cuffs, and put some arnica on his handkerchief, and started 
out. Ma told him not to drink anything, and he said he 
wouldn’t, but he did. He was full the third place he went 
to. O, so full. Some men can get full and not show it, but 
when Pa gets full, he gets so full his back teeth float, and the 
liquor crowds his eyes out, and his mouth gets loose and 
wiggles all over his face, and he laughs all the time, and the 
perspiration just oozes out of him, and his face gets red, and 
he walks so wide. O, he disgraced us all. At one place he 
wished the hired girl a happy new year more than twenty 
times, and hung his hat on her elbow, and tried to put on 
a rubber hall mat for his overshoes. At another place he 
walked up a lady’s train, and carried away a card basket full 
of bananas and oranges. Ma wanted my chum and me to 
follow Pa and bring him home, and about dark we foundhim 
in the door yard of a house where they have statues in front 
of the house, and he grabbed me by the arm, and mistook 
me for another caller, and insisted on introducing me to a 
marble statue without any clothes on. He said it was a 
friend of his, and it was a winter picnic. He hung his hat on 
an evergreen, and put his overcoat on the iron fence, and I 
was so mortified I almost cried. My chum said if his Pa 
made such a circus of himself he would sand-bag him. That, 
gave me an idea, and when we got Pa most home I went and 
got a paper box covered with red paper, so it looked just 
like a brick, and a bottle of tomato ketchup, and when we 


158 


peck’s bad boy 


got Pa up on the steps at home I hit him with the paper 
brick, and my chum squirted the ketchup on his head, and 
demanded his money, and then he yelled murder, and we lit 
out, and Ma and the minister, who was making a call on her, 



HE SAID IT WAS A FRIEND OF HIS. 


all the afternoon, they came to the door and pulled Pa in. 
He said he had been attacked by a band of robbers, and they 


peck’s bad boy. 


159 


knocked his brains out, but he whipped them, and then Ma 
saw the ketchup brains oozing out of his head, and she 
screamed, and the minister said, ‘Good heavens he is mur- 
dered,’ and just then I came in the back door and they sent 
me after the doctor, and they put Pa on the lounge and tied 
up his head with a towel to keep the brains in,[and Pa began 
to snore, and when the doctor came in it took them half an 
hour to wake him, and then he was awful sick to his stum- 
mick, and then Ma asked the doctor if he would live, and the 
Doc. analyzed the ketchup and smelled of it and told Mahe 
would be all right if he had a little Worcestersauce to put on 
with the ketchup, and when he said Pa would pull through, 
Ma looked awful sad. Then Pa opened his eyes and saw the 
minister and said that was one of the robbers that jumped 
on him, and he wanted to whip the minister, but the Doc. 
held Pa’s arms, and Ma sat on his legs, and the minister said 
he had got some other calls to make, and he wished Ma a 
happy new year in the hall, much as fifteen minutes. His 
happy new year to Ma is most as long as his prayers. Well, 
we got Pa To bed, and when we undressed him we found 
nine napkins in the bosom of his vest, that he had picked up 
at the places where he called. He is all right this morning, 
but he says it is the last time he will drink coffee when he 
makes New Year’s calls.” 

‘ Well, then you didn’t have much fun yourself on New 
Years. That’s too bad,” said the grocery man, as he looked 
at the sad-eyed youth. “ But you look hard. If you were 
old enough I should say you had been drunk, your eyes 
are so red.” 

“ Didn’t have any fun eh? Well, I wish I had as many 
dollars as I had fun. You see, after Pa got to sleep Ma 
wanted me and my chum to go to the houses that Pa had 
called at and return the napkins he had kleptomaniaced, so 
we dressed up and went. The first house we called at tlje 


i6o 


PECK S BAD BOY 


girls were sort of demoralized. I don’t know as I ever saw 
a girl drunk, but those girls acted queer. The callers had 
stopped coming, and the girls were drinking something out 
of shaving cups that looked like lather, and they said it was 
‘ aig-nogg.’ They laffed and kicked up their heels wuss nor 
a circus, and their collars got unpinned, and their faces was 
red, and they put their arms around me and my chum and 
hugged us and asked us if we didn’t want some of the 
custard. You’d a dide to see me and my chum drink that 
lather. It looked just like soap suds with nutmaig in it, 
but by gosh it got in its work sudden. At first I was afraid 

when the girls hug- 
ged me, but after I 
had drank a couple 
of shaving cups full 
of the ‘aig-nogg’ I 
wasn’t afraid no more, 
and I hugged a girl 
so hard she catched 
her breath an.d pan- 
ted and said, ‘O, 
don’t.’ Then I kissed 
her, and she is a great 
big girl, bigger’n me, 
but she didn’t care. 
Say, did you ever kiss 
a girl full of aig-nogg ? 
If you did it would break up your grocery business. You 
would want to waller in bliss instead of selling mackerel. My 
chum ain’t no slouch either. He was sitting in a stuffed chair 
holding another New Year’s girl, and I could hear him kiss her 
so it sounded like a cutter scraping on bare ground. But the 
girl’s Pa came in and said he guessed it was time to close the 
place, unless they had a license for an all night house, and me 



I WAS NOT AFRAID NO MORE. 


peck’s bad boy. 


i6i 


and my chum went out. But wasrit we sick when we got out 
doors. O, it seemed as though the pegs in my boots was 
the only thing that kept them down, and my chum he liked 
to dide. He had been to dinner and supper and I had only 
been skating all day, so he had more to contend with than I 
did. O, my, but that lets me out on aig-nogg. I don’t know 
how I got home, but I got in bed with Pa, cause Ma was 
called away to attend a baby matinee in the night. I don’t 
know how it is, but there never is anybody in our part of the 
town that has a baby but they have it in the night, and they 
send tor Ma. I don’t know what she has to be sent for every 
time for. Ma aint to blame for all the young ones in this 
town, but she has got up a reputashun, and when we hear 
the bell ring in the night Ma gets up and begins to put on 
her clothes, and the next morning she comes in the dining 
room with a shawl over her head; and says,. ‘ it’s a girl and 
weighs ten pounds,’ or a boy, if it’s a boy baby. Ma was out 
on one of her professional engagements, and I got in bed 
with Pa. I had heard Pa blame Ma about her cold feet, so I 
got a piece of ice about as big as a raisin box, just zactly 
like one of Ma’s feet, and I laid it right against the small of 
Pa’s back. I couldn’t help laffin, but pretty soon Pa began 
to squirm and he said, ‘Why’n ’ell don’t you warm them feet 
before you come to bed,’ and then he hauled back his leg ^ 
and kicked me clear out in the middle of the floor, and said 
if he married again he would marry a woman who had lost 
both of her feet in a railroad accident. Then I put the ice back 
in the bed with Pa and went to my room, and in the morn- 
ing Pa said he sweat more’n a pail full in the night. Well, 
you must excuse me. I have an engagement to shovel 
snow off the sidewalk. But before I go, let me advise you 
not to drink aig-nogg, and don’t sell Tom cats for rabbits,’’ 
and he got out the door just in time to miss the rutabaga that 
the grocery man threw at him. 

11 


/ 


CHAPTER XXX. 


HIS PA DISSECTED. 

The miseries of the mumps — No pickles thank you — One more effort to 
reform the old man — The bad boy plays medical student — Proceeds 
to dissect his pa — “Gentlemen I am not dead!” — Saved from the 
scalpel! — “ No more whisky for you.” 

“ I UNDERSTAND your Pa has got to drinking again like a 
fish,” says the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth 
came in the grocery and took a handful of dried apples. The 
boy ate a dried apple and then made up a terrible face, and 
the grocery man asked him what he was trying to do with 
hts face. The boy caught his breath and then said: 

“Say, don’t you know any better than to keep dried 
apples where a boy can get hold of them when he has got 
the mumps? You will kill some boy yet by such dum care- 
lessness. I thought these were sweet dried apples, but 
they are sour as a boarding-house keeper, and they make me 
tired. Didn’t you ever have the mumps? Gosh, but don’t 
it hurt though? You have got to be darned careful when 
you have the mumps, and not go out bob-sledding, or 
skating, or you will have your neck swell up biggern a milk 
pail. Pa says he had the mumps once when. he was a boy 
and it broke him all up,” 

“ Well, never mind the mumps, how about your Pa spree- 
ing it. Try one of those pickles in the jar there, won’t you? 
I always like to have- a boy enjoy himself when he comes to 
see me,” said the grocery man, winking to a man who was 
filling an old fashioned tin box with tobacco out of the pail, 
who winked back as much as to say, “ if that boy eats a 
pickle on top of them mumps we will have a circus, sure.” 

162 


peck’s bad boy. 


163 


“You can’t play no pickle on me, not when I have the 
mumps. Ma passed the pickles to me this morning, and I 
took one mouthful, and like to had the lockjaw. But Ma 
didn’t do it on purpose, I guess. \ She never had the mumps 
and didn’t know how discouraging a pickle is. Darn if I 
didn’t feel as though I had been struck in the butt of the 
ear with a brick. But about Pa. He has been fuller’n a 
goose ever since New Year’s day. I think it’s wrong for 
women to tempt feeble minded persons with liquor on New 
Year’s. Now me and my chum, we can take a drink and 
then let it alone. We have got brains, and know when we 
have got enough, but Pa, when he gets to going don’t ever 
stop until he gets so sick that he can’t keep his stummick 
inside of hisself. It is getting so they look to me to brace 
Pa up every time he gets on a tear, and I guess I fixed him 
this time so he will never touch liquor again. I scared him 
so his bald head turned gray in a single night.” 

“ What under the heavens have you done to him now?” 
says the grocery man, in astonishment. “ I hope you haven’t 
done anything you will regret in after years.” 

“ Regret nothing,” said the boy, as he turned the lid of 
the cheese box back and took the knife and sliced off a 
piece of cheese, and took a few crackers out of a barrel, and 
sat down on a soap box by the stove, “You see Ma was 
annoyed to death with Pa. He would come home full, when 
she had. company, and lay down on the sofa and snore, and 
he would smell like a distillery. It hurt me to see Ma cry, and 
I told her I would break Pa of drinking if she would let me, 
and she said if I would promise not to hurt Pa to go ahead, 
and I promised not to. Then I got my chum and another 
boy, quite a big boy, to help, and Pa is all right. We went 
down to the place where they sell arms and legs to folks 
who have served in the army, or a saw mill, or a thrashing 


peck’s bad BOV. 


164 

machine, and lost their limbs, and we borrowed some arms 
and legs, and fixed up a dissecting room. We fixed a long 
table in the basement, big enough to lay Pa out on you 
know, and then we got false whiskers and mustaches, and 
when Pa came in the house drunk and laid down on the sofa, 
and got to sleep, we took him and laid him out on the table, 
and took some trunk straps, and a sircingle and strapped 
him down to the table. He slept right along all through it, 
and we had another table with the false arms and legs on, 
and we roll^ up our sleeves, and smoked pipes, just like I 
read that medical students do when they cut up a man. 
Well, you’d a dide to see Pa look at us when he woke up. 
I saw him open his eyes, and then we began to talk about 
cutting up dead men. We put hickory nuts in our mouths 
so our voices would sound different, so he wouldn’t know us, 
and I was telling the other boys about what a time we had cut- 
ting up the last man we bought. I said he was awful tough, 
and when we had got his legs off, and had taken out his 
brain, his friends came to the dissecting room and claimed 
the body, and we had to give it up, but I saved the legs. 

I looked at Pa on the table and he began to turn pale, and 
he squirmed around to get up, but found he was fast. I had 
pulled his shirt up under his arms, while he was asleep, and 
as he began to move, I took an icicle, and in the dim light 
of the candles, that were sitting on the table in beer bottles, 

I drew the icjcle across Pa’s stummick and I said to my 
chum, ‘ Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer 
and see if he died from inflammation of the stummick, from 
hard drinking, as the coroner said he did.’ Pa shuddered 
all over when he felt the icicle going over his bare stum- 
mick, and he said, ‘ For God’s sake, gentlemen, what does 
this mean? I am not dead.” 

“ The other boys looked at Pa with astonishment, and I 
said, ‘ Well, we bought you for dead, and the coroner’s jury 


peck’s bad boy. 


165 


said you were dead, and by the eternal, we ain’t going to be 
fooled out of a corpse when we buy one, are we Doc?’ My 
chum said not if he knowed hisself, and the other students 
said, ‘ Of course he is dead. Rethinks he is alive, but he 
died day before yesterday, fell dead on the street, and his 
folks said he had been a nuisance and they wouldn’t claim 
the corpse, and we bought it at the morgue.’ Then I drew 
the icicle across him again, and I said, ‘ I don’t know about 
this, doctor. I find that blood follows the scalpel as I cut 
through the cuticle. Hand me the blood sponge please.' 
Pa began to wiggle around, and we looked at him, and my 
chum raided his eye-lid, and looked solemn, and Pa said. 



‘ Hold oh, gentlemen. Don’t cut into me any more, and I 
can explain this matter. This is all a mistake. I was only 
drunk.’ We went in a corner and whispered, and Pa kept 
talking all the time. He said if we would postpone the hog 
killing he could send and get witnesses to prove that he was 
not dead, but that he was a respectable citizen, and had a 
family. After we held a consultation I went to Pa and told 
him that what he said about being alive might possibly be 


peck’s bad boy. 


1 66 

true, though we had our doubts. We had found such cases- 
before in our practice east, where men seemed to be alive, but 
it was only temporary. Before we had got them cut up they 
were dead enough for all practical purposes. Then I laid the 
icicle across Pa’s abdomen, and went on to tell him that even 
if he was alive, it would be better for him to play that he 
was dead, because he was such a nuisance to his family that 
they did not want him, and I was telling him that I had 
heard that in his lifetime he was very cruel to his boy, a 
bright little fellow who was at the head of his class in Sun- 
day school, and a pet wherever he was known, when Pa inter- 
rupted me and said, ‘ Doctor, please take that carving knife 
off my stummick, for it makes me nervous. As for that boy 
of mine, he is the condemndest little whelp in town, and he 
isn’t no pet anywhere. Now, you let up on this dissecting 
business, and I will make it all right with you.’ We held an- 
other consultation and then I told Pa that we did not feel 
that it was doing justice to society to give up the body of 
a notorious drunkard, after we had paid twenty dollars for 
the corpse. If there was any hopes that he would reform 
and try and lead a different life, it would be different, and I 
said to the boys, ‘ gentlemen, we must do our duty. Doc, 
you dismember that leg, and I will attend to the stomach 
and the upper part of the body. He will be dead before we 
are done with him. We must remember that society has 
some claims on us, and not let our better natures be worked 
upon by the post mortem promises of a dead drunkard.’ 
Then I took my icicle and began fumbling around the ab- 
domen portion of Pa’s remains, and my chum took a rough 
piece of ice and began to saw his leg off, while the other 
boy took hold of the leg and said he would catch it when it 
dropped off. Well, Pa kicked like a steer. He said he 
wanted to make one more appeal to us, and we acted sort 
of impatient, but we let up to hear what he had to say. He 


peck’s bad boy. 


167 


said if we would turn him loose he v/ould give us ten dol- 
lars more than we paid for his body, and that he would 
never drink another drop as long as he lived. Then we 
whispered some more, and then told 
him we thought favorably of his last 
proposition, but he must swear, 
with his hand on the leg < 
corpse we were then dis- 
secting, that he would never 
drink again, and then he 
must be blindfold- 
ed and be con- 
ducted several 
blocks away from 
the dissecting 
room, before we 
could turn him 
loose. He said 
that was all right, 
and so we blind- 
folded him, and 
made him take a 
bloody oath, with 
his hand on a piece 
of ice that we told 
him was a piece of 
another corpse, and 
then we took him 
out of the house 
and walked him 
around the block 
four times, and left 
him on a corner, 
after he had prom- 



that’s a pretty narrow escape, old man. 


ised to send the money to an address that I gave him. We 
told him to stand still five minutes after we left him, then 
remove the blindfold, and go home. We watched him from 
behind a board fence, and he took off the handkerchief, 
looked at the name on a street lamp, and found he was not 
far from home. He started off saying, ‘ That’s a pretty 
narrow escape old man. No more whisky for you.’ I did 
not see him again until this morning, and when I asked him 
where he was last night he shuddered and said, ‘ None of 
your darn business. But I never drink any more, you re- 
member that.’ Ma was tickled and she told me I was worth 
my weight in gold. Well, good-day. That cheese is musty.” 
And the boy went and caught on a passing sleigh. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


HIS PA JOINS A TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. 

The grocery *tnan sympathizes with the old man — Warns the bad boy 
that he may have a step-father! — The bad boy scorns the idea — 
Introduces his Pa to the grand “worthy dude!” — The solemn 
oath — The brand plucked from the burning. 

“ Don’t you think my Pa is showing his age a good deal 
more than usual?” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as 
he took a smoked herring out of the box and peeled off the 
skin with a broken bladed jack-knife, and split it open and 
ripped off the bone, threw the head at a cat, and took some 
crackers and began to eat. 

“ Well, I dont know but he does look as though he was 
getting old,” said the grocery man, as he took a piece of yel- 
low wrapping paper, and charged the boy’s poor old father 
with a dozen herrings and a pound of crackers ; “ but there 
is no wonder he is getting old. I wouldn’t go through what 
your father has, the last year, for a million dollars. I tell you, 
boy, when your father is dead, and you get a step-father, 
and he makes you walk the chalk mark, you will realize 
what a bonanza you have fooled yourself out of by killing 
off your father. The way I figure it, your father will last 
about six months, and you ought to treat him right, the little 
time he has to live.” 

” Well, I am going to,” said the boy, as he picked the 
herring bones out of his teeth with a piece of a match that 
he sharpened with his knife. “ But I don’t believe in bor- 
rowing trouble about a step-father so long before hand I 

169 


170 


peck’s bad boy. 


don’t think Ma could get a man to step into Pa’s shoes, as 
long as I lived, not if she was inlaid with diamonds, and 
owned a brewery. There are brave men, I know, that are 
on the marry, but none of them would want to be brevet 
father to a cherubim like me, except he got pretty good 
wages. And then, since Pa was dissected he is going to 
lead a different life, and I guess I will make a man of him, 
if he holds out. We got him to join the Good Templars 
last night.” 

“ No, you don’t tell me,” said the grocery man, as he 
thought that his trade in cider for mince pies would be cut 
off. “ So you got him into the Good Templars, eh?” 

“ Well, he thinks he has joined the Good Templars, so it 
is all the same. You see my chum and me have been going 
to a private gymnasium, on the west side kept by a dutch- 
man, and in a back room he has all the tools for getting up 
muscle. There, look at my arm,” said the boy, as he rolled up 
his sleeve and showed a muscle about as big as an oyster. 
“ That is the result of training at the gymnasium. Before I 
took lessons I hadn’t any more muscle that you have got. 
Well, the dutchman was going to a dance on the south side 
the other night, and he asked my chum to tend the gymna- 
sium, and I told Pa if he would join the Good Templars 
that night there wouldn’t be many at the lodge, and he 
wouldn’t be so embarrassed, and as I was one of the officers of 
the lodge I would put it to him light, and he said he would 
go, so my chum got five other boys to help us put him 
through. So we steered him down to the gymnasium, and 
made him rap on the storm door outside, and I said who 
comes there, and he said it was a pilgrim who wanted to 
jine our sublime order. I asked him if he had made up his 
mind to turn from the ways of a hyena, and adopt the cus- 
toms of the truly good, and he said if he knew his own 
heart he had, and then I told him to come in out of the 


snow and take off his pants. He kicked a little at taking 
off his pants, because it was cold out there in the storm- 
door dog house, but I told him they all had to do it. The 
princes, potentates and paupers all had to come to it. He 
asked me how it was when we initiated women, and I told 
him women never took that degree. He pulled off his 
pants, and wanted a check for them, but I told him the 
Grand Mogul would hold his clothes, and then I blind- 
folded him, and with a base ball club I pounded on the 
floor as I walked around the gymnasium, while the lodge, 
headed by my chum, sung, ‘We won’t go home till morning,’ 
I stopped in front of the ice-water tank and said ‘Grand 
Worthy Duke, I bring before you a pilgrim who has drank 
of the dregs until his stomach wont hold water, and who 
desires to swear off.’ The Grand Mogul asked me if he was 
worthy and well qualified, and I told him that he had been 
drunk more or less since the reunion last summer, which 
ought to qualify him. Then the Grand Mogul made Pa 
repeat the most blood-curdling oath, in which Pa agreed, if 
he ever drank another drop, to allow anybody to pull his 
toe-nails out with tweezers, to have his liver dug out and 
fed to dogs, his head chopped off, and his eyes removed. 
Then the Mogul said he would brand the candidate on the 
bare back with the initial letters of our order, ‘ G. T.,’ that 
all might read how a brand had been snatched from the 
burning. You’d a dide to see Pa flinch when I pulled up his 
shirt, and got ready to brand him.” 

“ My chum got a piece of ice out of the water cooler, and 
just as he clapped it on Pa’s back I burned a piece of horse’s 
hoof in the candle and held it to Pa’s nose, and I guess Pa 
actually thought it was his burning skin that he smelled. 
He jumped about six feet and said, ‘Great heavens, what 
you dewin!’ and then he began to roll over a barrel which I 
had arranged for him. Pa thought he was going down cel- 


172 


peck’s bad boy. 


lar, and he hung to the barrel, but he was on top half the 
time. When Pa and the barrel got through fighting I was 
beside him, and I said, ‘Calm yourself, and be prepared for 
the ordeal that is to follow.’ Pa asked how much of this 



dum fooling there 
was, and said he was 
sorry he joined. He 
said he could let 
licker alone without 
having the skin all 
burned off his back. 
I told Pa to be brave 
and not weaken, and all would be well. He wiped the perspk 
ration off his face on the end of his shirt, and we put a belt 
around his body and hitched it to a tackle, and pulled him up 
so his feet were just off the floor, and then we talked as though 
we were away off, and I told my chum to look out that Pa did 


BIMEBY WE LET HIM DOWN. 


peck’s bad boy. 


173 


not hit the gas fixtures, and Pa actually thought he was be- 
ing hauled clear up to the roof. I could see he was scared 
by the complexion of his hands and feet, as they clawed the 
air. He actually sweat so the drops fell on the floor. Bime- 
by we let him down, and he was awfully relieved, though his 
feet were not niore than two inches from the floor any of the 
time. We were just going to slip Pa down a board with 
slivers in to give him a realizing sense of the rough road a 
reformed man has to travel, and got him straddle of the 
board, when the dutchman came home from the dance, full- 
ern a goose, and he drove us boys out, and we left Pa, and 
the dutchman said, ‘ Vot you vas doing here mit dose boys, 
you old duffer, and vere vas your pants? ’ and Pa pulled off 
the handkerchief from his eyes, and the dutchman said if 
he didn’t get out in a holy minute he would kick the stuffing 
out of him, and Pa got out. He took his pants and put 
them on in the alley, and then we come up to Pa and told 
him that was the third time the drunken dutchman had 
broke up our lodge, but we should keep on doing good un- 
til we had reformed every drunkard in Milwaukee, and Pa 
said that was right, and he would see us through if it cost 
every dollar he had. Then we took him home, and when 
Ma asked if she couldn’t join the lodge too. Pa said, ‘Now 
you take my advice, and don’t you ever join no Good Tem- 
plars. Your system could not stand the racket. Say, I 
want you to put some cold cream on my back.’ I think Pa 
will be a different man now, don’t you?” 

The grocery man said if he was that boy’s pa for fifteen 
minutes, he would be a different boy, or there would be a 
funeral, and the boy took a handful of soft-shelled almonds 
and a few layer raisins, and skipped out. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


HIS pa’s marvelous escape. 

The grocery man has no vaseline. — The old man provides three fire 
escapes — One of the escapes tested — His Pa scandalizes the church 
— '• She’s a darling!” — Worldly music in the courts of Zion. 

“ Got any vaseline,” said the ba^ boy to the grocery man, 
as he went into the store one cold morning, leaving the door 
open, and picked up a cigar stub that had been thrown down 
near the stove, and began to smoke it. • 

“ Shut the door, dum you. Was you brought up in a saw 
mill? You’ll freeze every potato in the house. No, I haven’t 
got vaseline. What do you want of vaseline?” said the 
grocery man, as he set the syrup keg on a chair by the stove 
where it would thaw out. 

“ Want to rub it on Pa’s legs,” said the boy, as he tried 
to draw smoke through the cigar stub. 

“What is the matter with your Pa’s legs? Rheumatiz?” 
“ Wuss nor rheumatiz,” said the boy, as he threw away 
the cigar stub and drew some cider in a broken tea cup. 
“ Pa has got the worst looking hind legs you ever saw. You 
see, since there has been so many fires Pa has got offul scared, 
and he has bought three fire escapes, made out of rope with 
knots in them, and he has been telling us every day how he 
could rescue the whole family in case of fire. He told us to 
keep cool, whatever happened, and to rely on him. If the 
house got on fire we were all to rush to Pa, and he would 
save us. Well, last night Ma had to go to one of the neigh- 
bors, where they was going to have twins, and we * didn’t 

174 


peck’s bad boy. 


175 


sleep much, cause Ma had to come home twice in the night 
to get saffron, and an old flannel petticoat that I broke in 
when I was a kid, cause the people where Ma went did not 
know as twins was on the bill of fare, and they only had 
flannel petticoats for one. Pa was cross at being kept awake, 
and told Ma he hoped when afl the children in Milwaukee 
were born, and got grown up, she would take in her sign and 
not go around nights and act as usher to baby matinees. Pa 
says there ought to be a law that babies should arrive only 
on the regular day trains, and not wait for the midnight ex- 
press. Well, Pa he got asleep, and he slept till about eight 
o’clock in the morning, and the blinds were closed, and it 
was dark in his room, and I had to wait for my breakfast till 
I was hungry as a wolf, and the girl told me to wake Pa up, 
so I went up-stairs, and I don’t know what made me think of 
it, but I had some of this powder they make red fire with in the 
theatre, that me and my chum had the 4th of July, and I put it 
in a washdish in the bath-room, and I touched it off and hol- 
lered fire. I was going to wake Pa up and tell him it was all 
right and laugh at him. I guess there was too much fire, or I 
yelled too loud, cause Pa jumped out of bed and grabbeda rope 
and rushed through the hall toward the back window, that 
goes out on the shed. I tried to say something, but Pa ran 
over me and told me to save myself, and I got to the back 
window to tell him there was no fire just as he let 
himself out of the window. He had one end of the rope 
tied to the leg of the washstand, and he was climbing down 
the back side of the shed by the kitchen, with nothing on but 
his nightshirt, and he was the horriblest looking object ever 
was, with his legs flying and trying to stick his toe nails into 
the rope and side of the house. I don’t think a man looks 
well in society with nothing on but his night shirt, I didn’t 
blame the hired girls for being scared when they saw Pa and 
his legs coming down outside the window, and when they 


peck’s bad boy. 


176 


yelled I went down to the kitchen, and they said a crazy 
man with no clothes on but a pillowslip around his neck was 
trying to kick the window in, and they ran into the parlor, 

and I opened the door 
and let Pa in the kitch- 
en. He asked me if any- 
body else was saved, and 
then I told him there 
was no fire, and he must 
have dreamed that he 
was in hell, or some- 
where. Well, Pa was 
astonished, and said he 
must be wrong in the 
head, and I left him 
thawing himself by the 
stove while I went after 
his pants, and his legs 
were badly chilled, but 
I guess nothin’ was froze. 
He lays it all to Ma, 
and says if she would 
stay at home and let 
p'eople run their own 
baby shows, there would 
be more comfort in the 
house. Ma came in with 
a shawl over her head, 
and a bowl full of some- 
thing that smelled 
frowy, and after she 
had told us what the 
result of her visit was, she sent me after vaseline to rub 
Pa’s legs. Pa says that he has demonstrated that if a man 



I didn’t blame the hired girls 

FOR BEING SCARED. 


peck’s bad boy. 


177 

is cool and collected, in case of fire, and goes deliberately 
at work to save himself, he will come out all right.” 

“ Well, you are the meanest boy I ever heard of,” said 
the grocery man. “ But what about your Pa’s dancing a clog 
dance in church Sunday? The minister’s hired girl was in 
here after some codfish yesterday morning, and she said the 
minister said your Pa had scandalized the church the worst 
way.” 

“ O, he didn’t dance in church. He was a little excited, 
that’s all. You see. Pa chews tobacco, and it is pretty hard 
on him to sit all through a sermon without taking a chew, 
and he gets nervous. He always reaches around in his pistol 
pocket, when they stand up to sing the last time, and feels 
in his tobacco box and gets out a chew, and puts it in his 
mouth when the minister pronounces the benediction, and then 
when they get out doors he is all ready to spit. He always 
does that Well, my chum had a present, on Christmas, of 
a music box, just about as big as Pa’s tobacco box, and all 
you have to do is to touch a spring and it plays, ‘ She’s a 
Daisy, She’s a Dumpling.’ I borrowed it and put it in Pa’s 
pistol pocket, and when the choir got most through singing. 
Pa reached his hand in his pocket and began to fumble 
around for a chew. He touched the spring, and just as 
everybody bowed their heads to receive the benediction, 
and it was so still you could hear a gum drop, the music box 
began to play, and in the stillness it , sounded as loud as a 
church organ. Well, I thought Ma would sink. The min- 
ister heard it, and everybody looked at Pa, too, and Pa 
turned red, and the music box kept up, ‘ She’s a Daisy,’ and 
the minister looked mad and said ‘Amen,’ and the people 
began to put on their coats, and the minister told the 
deacon to hunt up the source of that worldly music, and 
they took Pa into the room back of the pulpit and searched 
him, and Ma says Pa will have to be churched. They kept 
12 


178 


peck’s bad boy. 


the music box, and I have got to carry in coal to get money 
enough to buy my chum a new music box. Well, I shall 
have to go and get that vaseline or Pa’s legs will suffer. 
Good-day.” 



CHAPTER XXXIIL 


HIS PA JOKES WITH HIM. 

The bad boy caught at last — How to grow a mustache — Tar and 
cayenne pepper — The grocery man’s fate is sealed — Father and 
son join in a practical joke — Soft $oap on the steps — Downfall of 
ministers and deacons — Ma to the rescue ! — The bad boy gets 
even with his Pa, 

“What on earth is that you have got on your upper lip?” 
said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and be- 
gan to peel a rutabaga, and his upper lip hung down over 
his teeth, and was covered with something that looked like 
shoemaker’s wax, “You look as though you had been dig- 
ging potatoes with your nose.” 

“O, that is some of Pa’s darn smartness. I asked him if 
he knew anything that would make a boy’s mustache grow, 
and he told me the best thing he ever tried was tar, and for 
me to rub it on thick when I went to bed, and wash it off in 
the morning. I put it on last night, and by gosh I can’t 
wash it off. Pa told me all I had to do was to use a scour- 
ing brick, and it would come off, and I used the brick, and 
it took the skin off, and the tar is there yet, and, say, does 
my lip look very bad? ” 

The grocery man told him it was the worst looking lip he 
ever saw, but he could cure it by rubbing a little cayenne 
pepper in the tar. He said the tar would neutralize the pep- 
per, and the pepper would loosen the tar, and act as a cool- 
ing lotion to the lacerated lip. The boy went to a can of 
pepper behind the counter, and stuck his finger in and rub- 
bed a lot of it on his lip, and then his hair began to raise. 

179 


i8o 


peck’s bad boy. 


and he began to cry, and rushed to the water-pail and ran 
his face into the water to wash off the pepper. The grocery 
man laughed, and when the boy had got the pepper' washed 
off, and had resumed his rutabaga, he said: 

“That seals your fate. No rhan ever trifles with the feel- 
ings of the bold buccanner of the Spanish main, without 
living to rue it. I will lay for you, old man, and don’t you 
forget it. Pa thought he was smart when he got me to put 
tar on my lip, to bring my mustache out, and to-day he lays 
on a bed of pain, and to-morrow your turn will come. You 
will regret that you did not get down on your knees and beg 
my pardon. You will be sorry that you did not prescribe 
cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. 
Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you 
gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, 
you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotten 
egg fiend, you villain that sells smoked sturgeon and dog- 
fish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on your track.” 

“Look here, young man, don’t you threaten me, or I will 
take you by the ear and walk you through green fields, and 
beside still waters, to the front door, and kick your pistol 
pocket clear around so you can wear it for a watch pocket 
in your vest. No boy can frighten me, by crimus! But tell 
me, how did you get even with your Pa?” 

“Well, give me a glass of cider and we will be friends and 
I will tell you. Thanks! Gosh, but that cider is made out 
of mouldy dried apples and sewer water,” and he took a 
handful of layer raisins off the top of a box to take the taste 
out of his mouth, and while the grocer charged a peck of 
rutabagas, a gallon of cider and two pounds of raisins to the 
boy’s Pa, the boy proceeded: “You see. Pa lil<es a joke the 
best of anybody you ever saw, if it is on somebody else, but 
he kicks like a steer when it is on him. I asked him this 
morning if it wouldn’t be a good joke to put some soft soap 


i 


peck’s bad boy. 


i8i 



THE MINISTER AND TWO 
DEACONS. 


on the front step, so the letter 
carrier would slip up and spill 
hisself, and Pa said it would be 
elegant. Pa is a democrat, and 
he thinks that anything that will 
make it unpleasant for republi- 
can office holders, is legitimate, 
and he encouraged me to para- 
lyze the letter-carrier. The let- 
ter-carrier is as old a man as Pa, 
and I didn’t want to humiliate 
him, but I just wanted Pa to 
give his consent, so he couldn’t 
kick if he got caught in his own 
trap. You see? Well, this 
morning the minister and two 
of the deacons called on Pa, to 
have a talk with him , about his 
actions in church, on two or 
three occasions, when he pulled 
out the pack of cards with his 
handkerchief, and played the 
music box, and they had a pret- 
ty hot time in the back parlor, 
and finally they settled it, and 
were going to sing a hymn, 
when Pa handed them a little 
hymn book, and the minister 
opened it and turned pale and 
said, ‘what’s this?’ and they 
looked at it, and it was a book 
of Hoyle’s games instead of 
a hymn book. Gosh, wasn’t 
the minister mad! He had 


i 82 


peck’s bad BOV. 


started to read a hymn and he quit after he read two lines 
where it said, ‘In a game of four handed euchre, never trump 
your partner’s ace, but rely on the ace to take the trick on 
suit,’ Pa was trying to explain how the book came to be 
there, when the minister and deacons started out, and then 

I poured the two quart 


tin pail full of soft soap 
on the front step. It 
was this white soap, just 
the color af the 
step, and when I 



TALK ABOUT SPREADING THE GOSPEL. 

got it spread I went down in the basement. The visitors 
came out and Pa was trying to explain to them about Hoyle, 




when one of the deacons stepped in the soap, and his feet 
flew up and he struck on his pants and slid down the steps. 
The minister said, ‘Great heavens, deacon, are you hurt? let 
me assist you,’ and he took two quick steps, and you have 
seen these fellows in a nigger show that kick each other head 
over heels and fall on their ears, and stand on their heads 
and turn round like a top. The minister’s feet slipped and 
the next I saw was standing on his head in his hat, and 
his legs were sort of wilted and fell limp by his side, and 
he fell over on his stomach. You talk about spreading the 
gospel in heathen lands! It is nothing to the way you can 
spread it with two quarts of soft soap. The minister didn’t 
look pious a bit, when he was trying to catch the railing, he 
looked as though he wanted to murder every man on earth, 
but it may be he was tired. 

“Well, Pa was paralyzed, and he and the other deacon 
rushed out to pick up the minister and the first old man, and 
when they struck the step they went kiting. Pa’s feet some- 
how slipped backward, and he turned a somersault and 
struck full length on his back, and one heel was across the 
minister’s neck, and he slid down the steps, and the other 
deacon fell all over the other three, and Pa swore at them, 
and it was the worst looking lot of pious people I ever saw. 

I think if the minister had been in the woods somewhere, 
where nobody could have heard him, he would have used 
language. They all seemed mad at each other. The hired 
girl told Ma there was three tramps out on the sidewalk 
fighting Pa, and Ma she took the broom and started to help 
Pa, and I tried to stop Ma, ’cause her constitution is not very 
strong and I didn’t want her to do any flying trapeze biz- 
ness, but I couldn’t stop her, and she went out with the 
broom and a towel tied around her head. Well, I don’t 
know where Ma did strike, but when she came in she said 
she had palpitation of the heart, but that was not the place 


where she put the arnica. O, but she did go through the air 
like a bullet through cheese, and when she went down the 
steps a bumpity-bump, I felt sorry for Ma. The minister 
had got so he could sit up on the sidewalk, with his back 
against the lower step, when Ma came sliding down, and one 
of the heels of her gaiters hit the minister in the hair, and 
the other foot went right through between his arm and his 
side, and the broom like to pushed his teeth down his throat. 
But he was not mad at Ma. As soon as he see it was Ma he 
said, ‘ Why, sister, the wicked stand in slippery places, don’t 
they?’ and Ma she was mad and said for him to let go 
her stocking, and then Pa was mad and he said, ‘ look-a-here 
you sky-pilot, this thing has gone far enough,’ and then 
a policeman came along, and first he thought they were all 
drunk, but he found they were respectable, and he got a chip 
and scraped the soap off of them, and they went home, 
and Pa and Ma they got in the house some way, and just 
then the letter-carrier came along, but he didn’t have any 
letters for us, and he didn’t come onto the steps, and then I 
went up stairs and I said, ‘ Pa, don’t you think it is real mean, 
after you and I fixed the soap on the steps for the letter- 
carrier, he didn’t come ^n the steps at all,’ and Pa was 
scraping the soap off his pants with a piece of shingle, and 
the hired girl was putting liniment on Ma, and heating it in 
for palpitation of the heart, and Pa said, ‘ You dam idjut, no 
more of this, crt* I’ll maul the liver out of you,’ and I asked him 
if he didn’t think soft soap would help a mustache to grow, 
and he picked up Ma’s work-basket and threw it at my head, 
as I went down stairs, and I came over here. Don’t you 
think my Pa is unreasonable to get mad at a little joke that 
he planned himself?” 

The grocery man said he didn’t know, and the boy went 
out with a pair of skates over his shoulder, and the grocery 
man is wondering what joke the boy will play on him to get 
even for the cayenne pepper. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


HIS PA GETS MAD. 

A band of court plaster — The bad boy declines being mauled! — The 
old man gets a hot box — The bad boy borrows a cat! — The bat- 
tle! — “Helen blazes” — The cat victorious! — The bad boy draws 
the line at kindfing wood! 

“ I was down to the drug store this morning, and saw 
your Ma buying a lot of court-plaster, enough to make a 
shirt, I should think. What’s she going to do with so much 
court-plaster?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he 
came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied 
out a lot of snow, that had collected as he walked through a 
drift, which melted and made a bad smell. 

“ O, I guess she is going to patch Pa up so he will hold 
water. Pa’s temper got him in the worst muss you ever see, 
last night. If that musuem was here now they would hire 
Pa and exhibit him as the tattooed man. I tell you I have 
got too old to be mauled as though I was a kid, and any 
man who attacks me from this out, wants to have his peace 
made with the insurance companies, and know that his calling 
and election is sure, because I am a bad man, and don’t you 
forget it.” And the boy pulled on his boots and looked so 
cross and desperate that the grocery man asked him if he 
wouldn’t try a little new cider. 

“Good heavens!” said the grocery man, as the boy swal- 
lowed the cider, and his face resumed its natural look, 
and the piratical frown disappeared with the cider. “You 
have not stabbed your father, have you? I have feared that 

185 


peck’s bad boy. 


1 86 

one thing would bring on another, with you, and that you 
would yet be hung.” 

“ Naw, I haven’t stabbed him. It was another cat that 
stabbed him. You see, Pa wants me to do all the work 
around the house. The other day he bought a load of kind- 
ling wood, and told me to carry it into the basement. I have 
not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn’t to it. 
When supper time came, and Pa found that I had not carried 
in the kindling wood, he had a hot box, and he told me that 
if that wood was not in when he came back from the lodge, 
that he would warm my jacket. Well, I tried to hire some one 



I BORROWED A CAT. 


to carry it in, and got a man To promise to come in the 
morning and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I 
was going to buy the groceries here and have them charged 
to Pa. But that wouldn’t help me out that night. I knew 
when Pa came home he would search for me. So I slept in 
the back hall on a cot. But I didn’t want Pa to have all his 
trouble for nothing, so I borrowed an old tom cat that my 
chum’s old maid aunt owns, and put the cat in my bed. I 


peck’s bad boy. 


187 


thought if Pa came in my room after me, and found that by 
his unkindness I had changed to a tom cat, he would be 
sorry. That is the biggest cat you ever see, and the worst 
fighter in our ward. It isn’t afraid of anything, and can 
whip a Newfoundland dog quicker than you can put sand 
in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven o’clock I heard Pa 
tumble over the kindling wood, and I knew by the remark 



pa’s shirt was no protection at all. 


he made, as the wood slid around under him that there was 
going to be a cat fight real quick. He came up to Ma’s 
room, and sounded Ma as to whether Hennery had retired 
to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic when he tries 
to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him 


i88 


peck’s bad boy. 


say, as he picked up a trunk strap, ‘I guess I will go up to 
his room and watch the smile on his face, as he dreams of 
the angels. I yearn to press him to my aching bosom.’ I 
thought to myself, maybe you won’t yearn so much di- 
rectly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing 
hard. I looked around the corner and could see he just 
had on his shirt and pants, and his suspenders were hanging 
down, and his bald head shone like a calcium light just be- 
fore it explodes. Pa went in my room, and up to the bed, 
and I could hear him say, ‘Come out here and bring in 
that kindling wood, or I will start a fire on your base-burner 
with this strap.’ And then there was a yowling such as I 
never heard before, and Pa said, ‘Helen Blazes,’ and the 
furniture in my room began to fall around and break. O, 
my! I think Pa took the tom cat right by the neck, the way 
he does me, and that left all the cat’s feet free to get in their 
work. By the way the cat squalled as though it was being 
choked, I know Pa had him by the neck. I suppose the cat 
thought Pa was a whole flock of Newfoundland dogs, and 
the cat had a record on dogs, and it kicked awful. Pa’s shirt 
was no protection at all in a cat fight, and the cat just walked 
all around Pa’s stomach, and Pa yelled ‘police,’ and ‘fire,’ and 
‘turn on the hose,’ and he called Ma, and the cat yowled. 
If Pa had had the presence of mind enough to have dropped 
the cat, or rolled it up in the mattress, it would have been 
all right, but a man always gets rattled in time of danger, 
and he held onto the cat and started down stairs yelling 
murder, and he met ma coming up. 

“I guess Ma’s night cap, or something frightened the cat 
some more, cause he stabbed Ma on the night-shirt with one 
hind foot, and Ma said ‘mercy on us,’ and she went back, 
and Pa stumbled on a hand-sled that was on the stairs, and 
they all fell down, and the cat got away and went down in 
the coal bin and yowled all night. Pa and Ma went into 


peck’s bad boy. 


189 

their room, and I guess they anointed themselves with vase- 
line, and Pond’s extract, and I went and got into my bed, 
cause it was cold out in the hall, and the cat had warmed 
my bed as well as it had warmed Pa. It was all I could do 
to go to sleep, with Pa and Ma talking all night, and this 
morning I came down the back stairs, and haven’t been to 
breakfast, cause I don’t want to see Pa when he is vexed. 
You let the man that carries in the kindling wood have six 
shillings worth of groceries, and charge them to Pa. I have 
passed the kindling wood period in a boy’s life, and have 
arrived at the coal period. I will carry in coal, but I draw 
the line at kindling wood.” 

“ Well, you are a cruel, bad boy,” said the grocery man, 
as he went to the book and charged the six shillings. 

“ O, I don’t know. I think Pa is cruel. A man who will 
take a poor kitty by the neck, that hasn’t done any harm, 
and tries to chastise the poor thing with a trunk strap, ought 
to be looked after by the humane society. And if it is cruel 
to take a cat by the neck, how much more cruel is it to take 
a boy by the neck, that had diphtheria only a few years ago, 
and whose throat is tender. Say, I guess I will accept your 
invitation to take breakfast with you,” and the boy cut off a 
piece of bologna and helped himself to the crackers, and 
while the grocery man was out shoveling off the snow from 
the sidewalk, the boy filled his pockets with raisins and loaf 
sugar, and then went out to watch the man carry in his 
kindling wood. 


/ 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


HIS PA AN INVENTOR. 

The bad boy a martyr— The dog collar in the sausage — A patent stove — 

The patent tested! — His Pa a burnt offering — Early breakfast! 

“ Ha! Ha! Now I have got you,” said the grocery man to 
the bad boy, the other morning, as he came in, jumped upon 
the counter and tied the end of a ball of twine to the tail of a 
dog, and “sicked” the dog on another dog that was follow- 
ing a passing sleigh, causing the twine to pay out until the 
whole ball was scattered along the block. “ Condemn you. 
I’ve a notion to choke the liver out of you. Who tied that 
twine to the dog’s tail?” 

The boy choked up with emotion, and the tears came 
into his eyes, and he said he didn’t know anything about the 
twine or the dog. He said he noticed the dog come in, and 
wag his tail around the twine, but he supposed the dog was a 
friend of the family, and did not disturb him. “Everybody lays 
everything that is done to me,” said the boy, as he put his 
handkerchief to his nose, “and they will be sorry for it when 
I die. I have a good notion to poison myself by eating 
some of your glucose sugar.” 

“ Yes, and you do about everything that is mean. The 
other day a lady came in and told me to send up to her 
house some of my country sausage, done up in muslin bags, 
and while she was examining it sho noticed something hard 
inside the bags, and asked me what it was, and I opened it, 
and I hope to die if there wasn’t a little brass padlock and 
a piece of a red morocco dog collar imbedded in the sausage. 

190 


\ 


peck's bad boy. 


191 



Now, how do you suppose that 
got in there?” and the grocery man 
looked savage. 

The boy looked’ interested and put on 
an expression as though in deep thought, 
and finally said: “ I suppose the farmer 
that put up the sausage did not strain the 
dog meat. Sausage meat ought to be 
strained.” 

The grocery man pulled in about half 
a block of twine, after the dog had run 
against a fence and broke it, and told the 
boy he knew perfectly well how the brass 
padlock came to be in the sausage, but 
thinking it was safer to have the good will 
of the boy than the ill will, he offered him 
a handful of prunes. 

“ No,” says the boy, “ I have swore off 
on mouldy prunes. I am no kindergarten 
anymore. For years 
I have eaten rotten 
peaches around this 
store, and everything 
' you couldn’t sell, but 
I have turned over a 


EVERYBODY LAYS EVERYTHING THAT IS DONE TO ME. 


192 


peck's bad boy. 


new leaf now, and after this nothing is too good for me. 
Since Pa has got to be an inventor, we are going to live 
high.” 

“ What’s your Pa invented? I saw a hearse and three 
hacks go up on your street the other day and I thought may- 
be you had killed your Pa.” 

“ Not much, there will be more than three hacks when I 
kill Pa, and don’t you forget it. Well sir. Pa has struck a 
fortune, if he can make the thing work. He has got an idea 
about coal stoves that will bring him several million dollars 
if he gets a royalty of five dollars on every cook stove 
in the world. His idea is to have a coal stove on cas- 
tors, with the pipe made to telescope out and in, and rubber 
hose for one joint, so you can pull the stove all around the 
room and warm any particular place. Well, sir, to hear Pa 
tell about it- you would think it would revolutionize the 
country, and maybe it will when he gets it perfected, but he 
came near burning the house up, and scared us half to dealh 
this morning, and burned his shirt off, and he is all covered 
with cotton with sweet oil on, and he smells like salad dress- 
ing.” 

“You see Pa had a pipe made and some castors put on 
our coal stove, and he tied a rope to the hearth of the stove 
and had me put in some kindling wood and coal last night, 
so he could draw the stove up to the bed and light the fire 
without getting up. Ma told him he would put his foot in 
it, and he told her to dry up, and let him run the stove bus- 
iness. He said it took a man with brain to run a patent 
right, and Ma she pulled the clothes over her head and let 
Pa do the fire act. She has been building the fires for twenty 
years, and thought she would let Pa see how good it was. 
Well, Pa pulled the stove to the bed, and touched off the 
kindling wood. I guess may-be I got a bundle of kindling 
wood that the hired girl had put kerosene on, cause it blazed 


peck’s bad boy. 


193 


up awful and smoked, and the blaze bursted out the doors 
and windows of the stove, and Pa yelled fire, and I jumped 
out of bed and rushed in and he was the scartest man you 
ever see, and you’d a dide to see how he kicked when I 
threw a pail of water on his legs and put his shirt out. Ma 
did not get burned, but she was pretty wet, and she told Pa 
she would pay the five dollars royalty on that stove and 
take the castors off and let it remain stationary. Pa says 
he will make it work if he burns the house down. I think 
it was real mean in Pa to get mad at me because I threw 
cold water on him instead of warm water, to put his shirt 
out. If I had waited till I could heat water to the right 
temperature I would have been an orphan, and Pa would 
have been a burnt offering. But some men always kick at 
everything. Pa has given up business entirely and says he 
shall devote the remainder of his life curing himself of the 
different troubles that I get him into. He has retained a 
doctor by the year, and he buys liniment by the gallon.” 

“ What was it about your folks getting up in the middle 
of the night to eat? The hired girl was over here after 
some soap the other morning, and she said she was going to 
leave your house.” 

“ Well, that was a picnic. Pa said he wanted breakfast 
earlier than we were in the habit of having it, and he said I 
might see to it that the house was awake early enough. 
The other night I awoke with the awfulest pain you ever 
heard of. It was that night that you gave me and my chum 
the bottle of pickled oysters that had begun to work. Well, 
I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I would call the hired girls, 
and they got up and got breakfast to going, and then I 
rapped on Pa and Ma’s door and tolcl them the breakfast 
was getting cold, and they got up and came down. We eat 
breakfast by gas light, and Pa yawned and said that it made 
a man feel good to get up and get ready for work before 

13 


194 


peck’s bad boy. 


daylight, the way he used to on the farm, and Ma she 
yawned and agreed with Pa, ’cause she has to, or have a 
row. After breakfast we sat around for an hour, and Pa 
said it was a long time getting daylight, and bimeby Pa 
looked at his watch. When he began to pull out his watch 
I lit out and hid in the storeroom, and pretty soon I heard 



PA SAID IT made a man FEEL GOOD TO GET UP EARLY. 


Pa and Ma come up stairs and go to bed, and then the hired 
girls, they went to bed, and when it was all still, and the 
pain had stopped inside my clothes, I went to bed, and I 
looked to see what time it was and it was two o’clock in the 
morning. We get dinner at eight o’clock in the morning. 


peck’s bad boy. 


195 


and Pa said he guessed he would call up the house after this, 
so I have lost another job, and it was all on account of that 
bottle of pickled oysters you gave me. My chum says he 
had the colic too, but he didn’t call up his folks. It was all 
he could do to get up hisself. Why don’t you sometimes 
give away something that is not spoiled?” 

The grocery man said he guessed he knew what to give 
away, and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of 
the grocery, that he had made on wrapping paper with red 
chalk, which read, “ Rotten eggs, good enough for custard 
pies, for 18 cents a dozen.” 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 


HIS PA GETS BOXED. 

A parrot for sale — The old man is down on the grocer — “ A contrite 
heart beats a bob-tail flush ! ” — Polly’s responses — Can a parrot go 
to hell? — The old man gets another black eye — Duffy hits for keeps 
— Nothing like an oyster for a black eye. 

“ You don’t want to buy a good parrot, do you?” said the 
bad boy to the grocery man, as he put his wet mittens on 
the top of the stove to dry, and kept his back to the stove 
so he could watch the grocery man, and be prepared for a 
kick, if the man should remember the rotten-egg sign that 
the boy put up in front of the grocery, last week. 

“ Naw, I don’t want no parrot. I had rather have a fool 
boy around than a parrot. But what’s the matter with your 
Ma’s parrot? I thought she wouldn’t part with him for any- 
thing.” 

“Well, she wouldn’t until Wednesday night; but now 
she says she will not have him around, and I may have half 
I can get for him. She told me to go to some saloon, or 
some disreputable place and sell him, and I thought maybe 
he would about suit you,” and the boy broke into a bunch 
of celery, and took out a few tender stalks and rubbed them 
on a codfish, to salt them, and began to bite the stalks, while 
he held the sole of one wet boot up against the stove to dry 
it, making a smell of burned leather that came near turning 
the stomach of the cigar sign. 

“ Look-a-here, boy, don’t you call this a disreputable 
place. Some of the best people in this town come here,” 

196 


peck’s bad boy. 


197 


said the grocery man, as he held up the cheese-knife and 
grated his teeth as though he would like to jab it into the 
youth. 

“ O, that’s all right, they come here ’cause you trust; but 
you make up what you lose by charging it to other people. 
Pa will make it hot for you the last of the week. He has 
been looking over your bill, and comparing it with the hired 
girl, and she says we haven’t ever had a prune, or a dried 
apple, or a raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers and cheese 
out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James 
Brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man; 
and he will have you arrested for highway robbery, but you 
can settle that with pa. I like you, because you are no ordi- 
nary sneak thief. You are a high-toned, gentlemanly sort 
of a bilk, and wouldn’t take anything you couldn’t lift. O, 
keep your seat, and don’t get excited. It does a man good 
to hear the truth from one who has got the nerve to tell it. 

“ But about the parrot. Ma has been away from home for 
a week, having a high old time in Chicago, going to theaters 
and things, and while she was gone, I guess the hired girl or 
somebody learned the parrot some new things to say. A 
parrot that can only say ‘ Polly wants a cracker,’ don’t 
amount to anything — what we need is new style parrots that 
can converse on the topics of the day, and say things origi- 
nal. Well, when Ma got back, I guess her conscience hurt 
her for the way she had been carrying on in Chicago, and so 
when she heard the basement of the church was being fres- 
coed, she invited the committee to hold the Wednesday 
evening prayer meeting at our house. First, there were four 
people came, and Ma asked Pa to stay to make up a quorum, 
and Pa said seeing he had two pair, he guessed he would stay 
in, and if Ma would deal him a queen he would have a full 
hand. I don’t know what Pa meant; but he plays draw poker 
sometimes. Anyway, there were eleven people came includ- 


198 


peck’s bad boy. 


ing the minister, and after they had talked about the neigh- 
bors a spell, and Ma had showed the women a new tidy she 
had worked for the heathen, with a motto on it which Pa 
had taught her: *A contrite heart beats a bob-tail flush,’ — 
and Pa had talked to the men about a religious silver mine 



MA SHOOK HER HANDKERCHIEF AT POLLY. 


he was selling stock in, which he advised them as a friend 
to buy for the glory of the church, they all went in the back 
parlor, and the minister led in prayer. He got down on his 
knees right under the parrot’s cage, and you’d a dide to see 



peck’s bad boy. 


199 


Polly hang on to the wires of the cage with one foot, and 
drop an apple core on the minister’s head. Ma shook her 
handkerchief at Polly, and looked sassy, and Polly got up 
on the perch, and as the minister got warmed up, and began 
to raise the roof, Polly said, ‘ O, dry up.’ The minister had 
his eyes shut, but he opened one of them a little and looked 
at Pa. Pa was tickled at the parrot, but when the minister 
looked at Pa as though it was him that was making irrever- 
ent remarks, Pa was mad. 

“ The minister got to the ‘ Amen,* and Polly shook hisself 
and said ‘what you giving us?’ and the minister got up and 
brushed the bird seed off his knees, and he looked mad. I 
thought Ma would sink with mortification, and I was sitting 
on a piano stool, looking as pious as a Sunday School super- 
intendent the Sunday before he skips out with the bank’s 
funds; and Ma looked ai me as though she thought it was 
me that had been tampering with the parrot. Gosh, I never 
said a word to that parrot, and 1 can prove it by my chum. 

“Well, the minister asked one of the sisters if she 
wouldn’t pray, and she wasn’t engaged, sq she said with pleas- 
ure, and she kneeled down, but she corked herself, ’cause 
she got one knee on a cast iron dumb bell that I had been 
practicing with. She said ‘ O my,’ in a disgusted sort of a 
way, and then she began to pray for the reformation of the 
youth of the land, and asked for the spirit to descend on the 
household, and particularly on the boy that was' such a care 
and anxiety to his parents, and just then Polly said, ‘ O, pull 
down your vest.’ Well, you’d a dide to see that woman look 
at me. The parrot cage was partly behind the window cur- 
tain, and they couldn’t see it, and she thought it was me. 
She looked at Ma as though she was wondering why she 
didn’t hit me with a poker, but she went on, and Polly said, 
‘wipe off your chin,’ and then the lady got through and got 
up, and told ma it must be a great trial to have an idiotic 


200 


peck’s bad boy. 


child, and then Ma she was mad and said it wasn’t half so 
bad as it was to be a kleptomaniac, and then the woman got 
up and said she wouldn’t stay no longer, and Pa said to me 
to take that parrot out doors, and that seemed to make them 
all good natured again. Ma said to take the parrot and give 
it to the poor. I took the cage and pointed my finger at the 
parrot and it looked at the woman and said ‘old catamaran,’ 
and the woman tr^ed to look pious and resigned, but she 
couldn’t. As I was going out the door the parrot ruffed up 
his feathers and said ‘ Dammit, set ’em up,’ and I hurried out 
with the cage for fear he would say something bad, and the 
folks all held up their hands and said it was scandalous* 

. Say, I wonder if a parrot can go to hell with the rest of the 
community. Well, I put the parrot in the woodshed, and 
after they all had their innings, except Pa, who acted as um- 
pire, the meeting broke up, and Ma says it’s the last time 
she will have that gang at her house.” 

“That must have been where your Pa got his black eye,” 
said the grocery man, as he charged the bunch of celery to 
the boy’s Pa. “ Did the minister hit him, or was it one of 
the sisters?” 

“ O, he didn’t get his black eye at prayer meeting!” said 
the boy, as he took his mittens off the stove and rubbed 
them to take the stiffening put. “ It was from boxing. Pa 
told my chum and me that it was no harm to learn to box; 
’cause we could defend ourselves, and he said he used to be 
a holy terror with the boxing gloves when he was a boy, and 
he has been giving us lessons. Well, he is no slouch, now I 
tell you, and handles himself pretty well for a church member. 
I read in the paper how Zack Chandler played it on Conkling 
by getting Jem Mace, the prize fighter, to knock him silly, 
and I asked Pa if he wouldn’t let me bring a poor boy who had 
no father to teach him boxing, to our house to learn to box, 
and Pa said ‘certainly, fetch him along.’ He said he would be 


peck’s bad boy. 


201 


glad to do anything for a poor orphan. So I went down in the 
Third ward and got an Irish boy by the name of Duffy, who 
can knock the socks off of any boy in the ward. He fit a prize 
fight once. It would have made you laugh to see Pa tell- 
"ing him how to hold his hands, and how to guard his face. 
He told Duffy not to be afraid, but to strike right out and 
hit for keeps. Duffy said he was afraid Pa would get mad 
if he hit him, and Pa said, ‘ nonsense, boy, knock me down 
if you can, and I will laugh, ‘ha! hal’ Well, Duffy he 
hauled back and gave Pa one in the nose and another in 



THEN HE GAVE HIM A SIDE WINDER IN BOTH EYES. 


both eyes, and cuffed him on the ear and punched him in 
the stomach, and lammed him in the mouth and made his 
teeth bleed, and then he give him a side-winder in both 
eyes, and Pa pulled off the boxing gloves and grabbed a 
chair, and we adjourned and went down-stairs as though 
there was a panic. I haven’t seen Pa since. Was his eye 
very black?” 

“Black, I should say so,” said the grocery man. “And his 


202 


peck’s bad boy. 


nose seemed to be trying to look into his left ear. He was 
at the market buying beefsteak to put on it.” 

” O, beefsteak is no account. I must go and see him and 
tell him that an oyster is the best thing for a black eye. 
Well, I must go. A boy has a pretty hard time running a 
house the way it should be run,” and the boy went out and 
hung up a sign in front of the grocery; * Frowy Butter a 
Speshulty* ” 



PECK’S 


BAD BOY 

AND HIS PA. 


VOL. II. 


(FIRST AND ONLY COMPLETE EDITION.) 


By Geo. W. Peck, 

Aathor of “Peck’s Fun,’’ “Peck’s Sunshine,’’ “Peck’s Boss Book,’’ Etc. 


With ioo Illustrations by True Williams. 


Chicago: 

W. a CONKEY COMPANY. 


COPYRIGHT 

GEORGE W. PECK. 
1883. 


COPYRIGHT 

W. B. CONKEY COMPANY, 


THE GROCERY MAN 


AND 

PECK’S BAD BOY. 


CHAPTER I. 

VARIEGATED DOGS. 

The bad boy sleeps on the roof — A man doesn’t know everything at 
forty-eight — The old man wants some Pollynurious water. The 
dyer’s dogs — Procession of the dogs — Pink, blue, green and white — 
“Well I’m dem’d” — His Pa don’t appreciate. 

“ How do you and your Pa get along now?” asked the 
grocery man of the bad boy, as he leaned against the counter 
instead of sitting down on a stool, while he bought a bottle 
of liniment. 

O, I don’t know. He don’t seem to appreciate me. 
What he ought to have is a deaf and dumb boy, with only 
one leg, and both arms broke — then he could enjoy a quiet 
life. But I am too gay for Pa, and you needn’t be surprised 
if you never see me again. I talk of going off with a circus. 
Since I played the variegated dogs on Pa, there seems to 
have been a coldness in the family, and I sleep on the 
roof.” 

“ Variegated dogs,” said the store keeper, “ what kind of 
a game is that? You have not played another Daisy trick 
on your Pa, have you?” 


206 


peck’s bad boy. 


“ Oh, no, it was nothing of that kind. You know Pa 
thinks he is smart. He thinks because he is forty-eight 
years old he knows it all; but it don’t seem to me as though 
a man of his age, that had sense, would let a tailor palm off 
on him a pair of pants so tight that he would have to use a 
button-hook to button them; but they can catch him on 
everything, just as though he was a kid smoking cigarettes. 
Well, you know Pa drinks some. That night the new club 
opened he came home pretty fruitful, and next morning his 
head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I would go 
down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. 
You know that dye house on Grand avenue, where they have 
got the four white spitz dogs. When I went after the penurious 
water, I noticed they had been coloring their dogs with the 
dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dye man’s little boy 
to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink, 
another blue, another red, and another green, and I told the 
boy I would treat him to ice cream if he would let one out 
at a time, when I came down with Pa, and call him in and 
let another out, and when we started to go away, to let them 
all out. What I wanted to do was to paralyze Pa, and make 
him think he had got ’em, got dogs the worst way. So, about 
ten o’clock when his head got cleared off, and his stomach 
got settled, he changed ends with his cuffs, and we came 
down town, and I told him I knew where he could get a 
splendid white spitz dog for me, for five dollars; and if he 
would get it, I would never do anything disrespectful again, 
and would just sit up nights to please him, and help him up 
stairs and get seltzer for him. So we went by the dye house 
and just as I told him I didn’t want anything but a white 
dog, the door opened, and the pink dog came out and barked 
at us, and I said ‘that’s him’ and the boy called him back. 
Pa looked as though he had the colic, and his eyes stuck 
out, and he said ‘Hennery, that is a pink dog!’ and I said 


peck's bad boy. 


207 


‘no, it is a white dog, Pa,’ and just then the green dog came 
out, and I asked Pa if it wasn’t a pretty white dog, and Pa, 
he turned pale and said ‘hell, boy, that is a green dog — 
what’s got into the dogs?’ I told he must be color blind, 
and was feeling in my pocket for a strap to tie the dog, and 
telling him he must be careful of his health or he would see 
something worse than green dogs, when the green dog went 
in, and the blue dog came rushing out and barked at Pa. 
Well, Pa leaned against a tree box, and his eyes stuck out 
like stops on an organ, and the sweat was all over his face in 
drops as bigas kernels of hominy. 

“ I think a boy ought to do everything he can to make it 
pleasant for his Pa, you?. And yet, some parents don’t 
realize what a comfort a boy is. The blue dog was called 
in, and just as Pa wiped the perspiration off his forehead, 
and rubbed his eyes, and put on his specs, the red ma- 
roon dog came out. Pa acted as if he was tired, and sat 
down on a horse block. Dogs do make some people tired, 
don’t they? He took hold of my hand, and his hand trem- 
bled just as though he was putting a gun wad in the collec- 
tion plate at church, and he said, ‘My son, tell me truly, is 
that a red dog? ’ 

“A fellow has got to lie a little if he is going to have any 
fun with his Pa, and I told him it was a white dog, and I 
could get it for five dollars. He straightened up just as the 
dog went into the house, and said, ‘Well, I’m dem’d;’ and 
just then the boy let all. the dogs out and sicked them on a 
cat, which ran up a shade tree right near Pa, and they rushed 
all around us — the blue dog going between his legs, and the 
green dog trying to climb the tree, and the pink dog bark- 
ing, and the red dog standing on his hind feet. 

“Pa was weak as a cat, and told me to go right home with 
him, and he would buy me a bicycle. He asked me how 
many dogs there were, and what was the color of them. I 


208 


peck’s bad boy. 


s’pose I did awful wrong, but I told him there was only one 
dog, and a cat, and the dog was white. 

“ Well, sir. Pa acted just as he 
did the night Hancock was beat, 
and he had to have the doctor 
to give him something to quiet 
him (the time he wanted me to 
go right down town and buy a 

in 9 ^ 

4 . nWl 

* 4=0 



I TOLD HIM THERE .WAS ONLY ONE DOG AND A CAT. 

hundred rat traps, but the doctor said never mind, I needn’t 
go). I took him home, and Ma soaked his feet, and give 
him some ginger tea, and while I was gone after the doctor 
he asked Ma if she ever saw a green dog. 


peck’s bad boy. 


209 


“That was what made all the trouble. If Ma had kept her 
mouth shut I would have been all right, but she up and told 
him that they had a green dog, and a blue dog, and all col- 
ors of spitz dogs down at the dyers. They dyed them just 
for an advertisement, and for him to be quiet, and he would 
feel better when he got over it. Pa was all right when I got 
back and told him the doctor had gone to Wauwatosa, and 
I had left an order on his slate. Pa said he would leave an 
order on my slate. He took a harness tug and used it for 
breeching on me. I don’t think a boy’s Pa ought to wear a 
harness on his son, do you? He said he would learn me to 
play rainbow dogs on him. He said I was a liar, and he 
expected to see me wind up in Congress. Say, is Congress 
anything like Waupun or Sing Sing? No, I can’t stay, thank 
you, I must go down to the office aud tell Pa I have re- 
formed, and freeze him out of a circus ticket. He is a good 
enough man, only he don’t appreciate a boy that has got all 
the modern improvements. Pa and Ma are going to enter 
me in the Sunday school. I guess I’ll take first money, don’t 
you?’’ 

And the bad boy went out with a visible limp, and a look 
of genius cramped for want of opportunity. 


u 


CHAPTER II. 


HIS PA PLAYS JOKES. 

A man shouldn’t get mad at a joke— The magic bouquet — The grocery 
man takes a turn— His Pa tries the bouquet at church — One for the 
old maid— A fight ensues — The bad boy threatens the grocery man 
— A compromise. 

“ Say, do you think a little practical joke does any hurt?” 
asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he came in with 
his Sunday suit on, and a bouquet in his button-hole, and 
pried off a couple of figs from a new box that had been just 
opened. 

“No sir,” said the grocery man, as he licked off the syrup 
that dripped from a quart measure, from which he had been 
filling a jug. “ I hold that a man who gets mad at a prac- 
tical joke, that is, one that does not injure him, is a fool, and 
he ought to be shunned by all decent people. That’s a 
nice bouquet you have in your coat. What is it, pansies? 
Let me smell of.it,” and the grocery man bent over in front 
of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a 
stream of water shot out of the innocent looking bouquet 
and struck him full in the face, and run down over his shirt, 
and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of 
axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for a 
towel to wipe his face. 

“You condemn skunk/’ said the grocery man to the boy, 
as he took up an axe helve and started for him, “ what kind 
of a golblasted squirt gun have you got there. I will maul 
you, by thunder,” and he rolled up his shirt sleeves 

210 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


2II 


“ There, keep your temper. I took a test vote of you on 
the subject of practical jokes, before the machine began to 
play upon the conflagration that was raging on your whiskey 
nose, and you said that a man who would get mad at 
a joke was a fool, and now I know it. Here let me 
show it to you. There is a rubber hose runs from the bou- 
quet, inside my coat to my pants pocket, and there is a bulb 
of rubber, that holds about half a pint, and when a feller 
smells of the posey, I squeeze the bulb, and you see the 
result. It’s fun, where you don’t squirt it on a person that 
gets mad.” 

The grocery man said he would give the boy half a 
pound of figs if he would lend the bouquet to him for half 
an hour, to play it on a customer, and the boy fixed it on 
the grocery man, and turned the nozzle so it would squirt 
right back into the grocery man’s face. He tried it on the 
first customer that came in, and got it right in his own face, 
and then the bulb in his pants pocket got to leaking, and 
the rest of the water ran down the grocery man’ trousers’ 
leg, and he gave it up in disgust, and handed it back to the 
boy. 

“ How was it your Pa had to be carried home from the 
sociable in a hack the other night?” asked the grocery man, 
as he stood close to the stove so his pants leg would dry. 
“ He h^s not got to drinking again, has he?” 

“O, no,” said the boy, as he filled the bulb with vinegar, 
to practice on his chum. ‘Tt was this bouquet that got Pa 
into the trouble. You see I got Pa to smell of it, and I just 
filled him chuck full of water. He got mad and called me 
all kinds of names, and said I was no good on earth, and I 
would fetch up in state’s prison, and then he wanted to bor- 
row it to wear to the sociable. He said he would have more 
fun than you could shake a stick at, and I asked him if he 
didn’t think he would fetch up in state’s prison, and he said 


212 


peck’s bad boy. 


it was different with a man. He said when a man played a 
joke there was a certain dignity about it that was lacking nn 
a boy. So I lent it to him, and we all went to the sociable 
in the basement of the church. I never see Pa morekitteny 
than he was that night. He filled the bulb with ice water, 
and the first one he got to smell of his button-hole bouquet 



IT STRUCK HER RIGHT ON THE NOSE. 


was an old maid who thinks Pa is a heathen, but she likes 
to be made something of by anybody that wears pants, and 
when Pa sidled up to her and began talking about what a 
great work the Christian wimmen of the land were doing in 
educating the heathen, she felt real good, and then she no- 


peck’s bad boy. 


213 


ticed Pa’s posey in his button-hole and she touched it, and 
then she reached over her beak to smell of it. Pa he squeezed 
the bulb, and about half a teacupful of water struck her 
right in the nose, and some went into her strangle place, 
and 0, my, didn’t she yell. The sisters gathered around her 
and they said her face was all covered with perspiration, 
and the paint was coming off, and they took her in the 
kitchen, and she told them Pa had slapped her with a dish 
of ice cream, and the wimmin told the minister and the dea- 
cons, and they went to Pa for an explanation, and Pa told 
them it was not so, and the minister got interested and got 
near Pa, and Pa let the water go at him, and hit him in the 
eye, and then a deacon got a dose, and Pa laughed; and then 
the minister, who used to go to college, and be a hazer, and 
box, he got mad and squared off and hit Pa three times 
right by the eye, and one of the deacons kicked Pa, and Pa 
got mad and said he could clean out the whole shebang, 
and began to pull off his coat, when they bundled him out 
doors, and Ma got mad to see Pa abused, and she left the 
sociable, and I had to stay and eat ice cream and things for 
the whole family. Pa says that settles it with him. He 
says they haven’t got any more Christian charity in that 
church than they have in a tannery. His eyes are just get- 
ting over being black from the sparring lessons, and now he 
has got to go through oysters and beef-steak cure again. 
He says it is all owing to me.” 

“ Well, what has all this got to do with your putting up 
signs in front of my store, ‘Rotten Eggs,’ and ‘Frowy 
Butter a specialty,’ said the grocery man as he took the boy 
by the ear and pulled him around. You have got an idea 
you are smart, and I want you to keep away from here. 
The next time I catch you in here I shall call the police and 
have you pulled. Now git!” 

The boy pulled his ear back on the side of his he^d 


214 


peck’s bad boy. 


where it belonged, took out a cigarette and lit it, and after 
puffing smoke in the face of the grocery cat that was sleep- 
ing on the cover to the sugar barrel he said: 

If I was a provision pirate that never sold anything but 
what was spoiled so it couldn’t be sold in a first-class store, 
who cheated in weights and measures, who bought only 
wormy figs and decayed cod-fish, who got his butter from a 



IF I WAS A PROVISION PIRATE. 


/at rendering establishment, his cider from a vinegar factory^ 
and his sugar from a glucose factory, I would not insult the 
son of one of the finest families. Why, sir, I could go out 
on the corner, and when I saw customers coming here, I 
could tell a story that would turn their stomachs, and send 
them to the grocery on the next corner. Suppose I should 
tell them that the cat sleeps in the dried apple barrel, that 
the mice made nests in the prune box, and rats run riot 
through the rasins, and that you never wash your hands 


peck’s bad boy. 


215 


except on Decoration day and Christmas, that you wipe your 
nose on your shirt sleeves, and that you have the itch, do you 
think your business would be improved? Suppose I should 
tell customers that you buy sour kraut of a wooden-shoed 
Polacker, who makes it of pieces of cabbage that he gets by 
gathering swill, and sells thatstuff to respectable people, could 



ONE OF THE BEST 


you pay your renti' ir 1 
should tell them that you put 
lozengers in the collection 
plate at church, and charge 
the minister forty cents a 
pound foroleomargarine, you 
would have to close up. Old 
man, I am pnto you, and now 
you apologize for pulling my 
ear.” 

The grocery man turned 
pale during the recital, and 
finally said the bad boy was 
one of the best little fellows 
in this town, and the boy 
went out and hung up a sign 
in front: Girl wanted to cook. 


boys in town. 


CHAPTER IIL 


HIS PA STABBED. 

The grocery man sets a trap in vain — A boom in liniment — His Pa goes 
to the Langtry show — The bad boy turns burglar — The old man 
stabbed — His account of the fray — A good single handed liar. 

“ I HEAR you had burglars over to your house last night,” 
said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and sat 
on the counter ^ight over a little gimlet hole, where the 
grocery man had fixed a darning needle so that by pulling 
a string the needle would fly up through the hole and run 
into the boy about an inch. The grocery man had been 
laying for the boy about two days, and now that he had got 
him right over the hole the first time, it made him laugh to 
think how he would make him jump and yell, and as he 
edged off and got hold of the string the boy looked un- 
coQscious of impending danger. The grocery man pulled, 
and the boy sat still. He pulled again, and again, and 
finally the boy said: 

“ Yes, it is reported that we had burglars over there. 
you needn’t pull that string any more. I heard you was 
setting a trap_fdr me, and 1 put a piece of board inside my 
pants, and thought I would let you exercise yourself. Go 
ahead if it amuses you. It don’t hurt me.” 

The grocery man looked sad, and then smiled a sickly 
sort of a smile, at the failure of his plan to puncture the 
the boy, and then he said, “Well, how was it? The police- 
man didn’t seem to know much about the particulars. He said 
there was so much deviltry going on at your house that 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


217 


nobody could tell when anything was serious, and he was 
inclined to think it was a put up job.” 

“ Now let’s have an understanding,” says the boy. “ What- 
ever I say, you are not to give me away. It’s a go, is it? I 
have always been afraid of you, because you have a sort of 
decayed egg look about you. You are like a peck of pota- 
toes with the big ones on top, a sort of a strawberry box, 
with the bottom raised up, so I have thought you would go 
back on a fellow. But if you won’t give this away, here 
goes. You see, I heard Ma tell Pa to bring up another bottle 
of liniment last night. When Ma corks herself, or has a 
pain anywhere, she just uses liniment for all that is out, and 
a pint bottle don’t last more than a week. Well, I told my 
chum, and we laid for Pa. This liniment Ma uses is offul 
hot, and almost blisters. Pa went to the Langtry show, and 
did not get home till eleven o’clock, and me and my chum 
decided to teach Pa a lesson. I don’t think it is right for a 
man to go to the theaters and not take his wife or his little 
boy.” 

“So we concluded to burgle Pa. We agreed to lay on the 
stairs, and when he came up my chum was to hit him on the 
head with a dried bladder, and I was to stab him on , his 
breast pocket with a stick, and break the liniment bottle, 
and make him think he was killed. 

“ It couldn’t havie worked better if we had rehearsed it. 
We had talked about burglars at supper time, and got Pa 
nervous, so when he came up stairs and was hit on the head 
with the bladder, the first thing he said was ‘Burglars, by 
mighty,’ and he started to go back, and I hit him on the 
breast pocket, where the bottle was, and then we rushed by 
him, down stairs, and I said in a stage whisper, ‘I guess he’s 
a dead man,’ and we went down cellar and up the back 
stairs to my room and undressed. Pa -hollered to Ma that 
he was murdered, and Ma called me, and I came down in 


peck’s bad boy. 


siS 

my night-shirt, and the hired girl she came down, and Pa 
was on the lounge, and he said his life-blood' was fast ebbing 
away. He held his hand on the wound, and said he could 
feel the warm blood trickling clear down to his boots. I 
told Pa to stuff, some tar into the wound, such as he told me 
to put on my lip to make my mustache grow, and Pa said, 
‘My boy, this is no time for trifling. Your Pa is on his last 



“1 HAVE RECEIVED MY DEATH WOUND.” 


legs. When I came up stairs I met six burglars, and I 
attacked them, and forced four of them down, and was 
going to hold them and send for the police, when two more, 
that I did not know about, jumped on me, and I was getting 
the best of them when one of them struck me over the head 
with a crowbar, and the other stabbed me in the heart with 


peck’s bad boy. 


219 


a butcher knife. I have received my death wound, my boy, 
and my hot southern blood, that I offered up so freely for 
my country in her time of need, is passing from my body, 
and soon your Pa will be only a piece of poor clay. Get 
some ice and put on my stomach, and all the way down, for 
I am burning up.’ I went to the water pitcher and got a 
chunk of ice and put inside Pa’s shirt, and while Ma was 
tearing up an old skirt to stop the flow of blood, I asked Pa 
if he felt better, and if he could describe the villains who 
had murdered him. Pa gasped and moved his legs to get 
them cool from the clotted blood, he said, and he went on, 
‘One of them was about six foot high, and had a sandy 
mustache. I got him down and hit him on the nose, and if 
the police find him, his nose will bebroke. The second one was 
thick set, and weighed about two hundred. I had him down 
and ray boot was on his neck, and I was knocking two more 
down when I was hit. The thick set one will have the mark 
of boot heels on his throat. Tell the police when I’m gone, 
about the boot heel marks.’ 

“ By this time Ma had got the skirt tore up and she stuffed 
it under Pa’s shirt, right where he said he was hit, and Pa 
was telling us what to do to settle his estate, when Ma began 
to smell the liniment, and she found the broken bottle in his 
pocket, and searched Pa for the place where he was stabbed, 
and then she began to laugh, and Pa got mad and said he 
didn’t see as a death-bed scene was such an almighty funny 
affair; and then she told him he was not hurt, but that he had 
fallen on the stairs and broke his bottle, and that there was 
no blood on him, and he said, ‘do you mean to tell me my 
body and legs are not bathed in human gore?’ and then Pa 
got up and found it was only the liniment. He got mad and 
asked Ma why she didn’t fly around and get something to 
take that liniment off his legs, as it was eating them right 
through to the bone; and then he saw my chum put his head 


220 


peck’s bad boy. 


in the door, with one gallus hanging down, and Pa looked at 
me, and then he said, ‘ Look-a-here, if I find out it was 
you boys that put up this job on me, I’ll make it so hot for 
you that you will thiilk lini- 
ment is ice cream in compari- 
son.’ I told Pa it didn’t look 
reasonable that me and my 
chum could be six burglars. 



THE DEACON GOT OFF THE COUNTER WITH HIS HAND CLASPED. 


six feet high, with our noses broke, and boot-heel marks 
on our neck, and Pa, he said for us to go to bed all-fired 


peck’s bad boy. 


221 


^uick, and give him a chance to rinse off that liniment, and 
we retired. Say, how does my Pa strike you as a good 
single-handed liar?” and the boy went up to the counter, 
while the grocery man went after a scuttle of coal. 

In the mean time one of the grocery man’s best customers 
— a deacon in the church — had come in and sat down on the 
counter over the darning needle, and as the grocery man 
came in with the coal, the boy pulled the string, and went 
out the door and tipped over a basket of rutabagas, while 
the deacon got down off the counter with his hands clasped, 
and anger in every feature, and told the grocery man he 
could whip him in two minutes. The grocery man asked 
what was the matter, and the deacon hunted up the source 
from whence the darning needle came through the counter, 
and as the boy went across the street, the deacon and the 
grocery man were rolling on the floor, the grocery man fry- 
ing to hold the deacon’s fists while he explained about the 
darning needle, and that it was intended for the boy. How it 
came out the boy did not wait to see. 


f 


CHAPTER IV. 


HIS PA BUSTED. 

The craze for mining stock — What’s a bilk? — The pious bilk — The old 
man invests — The deacons and even the hired girls invest — Hot 
maple syrup for one — Getting a man’s mind off his troubles. 

“ Say, can’t I sell you some stock in a silver mine?” asked 
the bad boy of the grocery .man, as he came in the store and 
pulled from his breast pocket a document printed on parch- 
ment paper, and representing several thousand dollars stock 
in a silver mine, 

“ Look-a-here,” said the grocery man, as he turned pale, 
and thought of telephoning to the police station for a detec- 
tive, “ you haven’t been stealing your father’s mining stock, 
have you? Great heavens, it has come at last! I have 
known all the time that you would turn out to be a burglar, 
or a defaulter or robber of some kind. Your father has the 
reputation of having a bonanza in a silver mine, but if you 
go lugging his silver stock around he will soon be ruined. 
Now you go right back home and put that stock in your Pa’s 
safe, like a good boy.” 

“ Put it in the safe! O, no, we keep it in a box stall now, 
in the barn. I will trade you this thousand dollars in stock 
for two heads of lettuce, and get Pa to sign it over to you, if 
you say so. Pa told me I could have the whole trunk full if 
I wanted it, and the hired girls are using the silver stock to 
clean the windows, and kindle fires, and Pa has quit the 
church, and says he won’t belong to any concern that har- 
bors bilks. What’s a bilk?” said the boy as he opened a 


peck’s bad boy. 


223 


candy jar and took out four sticks of hoarhound candy. 

A bilk,” said the grocery man, as he watched the boy, 
is a fellow that plays a man for candy, or money, or any- 
thing, and don’t intend to return an equivalent. You are a 
small sized bilk. But what’s the matter with your Pa and 
the church, and what has the silver mine stock got to do 
with it?” 

“Well, you remember that exhorter that was here last 
fall, that used to board around with the church people all 
the week and talk about Zion and laying up treasures where 
the moths wouldn’t gnaw them, and they wouldn’t get rusty. 



AND PA USED TO SIT UP NIGHTS TO LOOK AT IT. 

and where thieves wouldn't pry off the hinges. He was the 
one that used to go home with Ma from prayer meetings, 
when Pa was down town, and who wanted to pay off the 
church debt in solid silver bricks. He’s the bilk. I guess 
if Pa should get him by the neck he would jerk nine 
kinds of revealed religion out of him. O, Pa is hotter 
than he was when the hornets took the lunch off of him. 


peck’s bad boy. 


224 

When you strike a pious man on the pocket-book it hurts 
him. That fellow prayed and sang like an angel, and 
boarded around like a tramp. He stopped at our house 
over a week, and he had specimens of rock that were chuck 
full of silver and gold, and he and Pa used to sit up nights 
and look at it. You could pick pieces of silver out of the 
rock as big as buck shot, and he had some silver bricks that 
were beautiful. He had been out in Colorado and found a 
hill full of silver rock, and he wanted to form a stock com- 
pany and dig out millions of dollars. He didn’t want any- 
body but pious men that belonged to the church, in the 
company, and I think that was one thing that caused Pa to 
unite with the church so suddenly. I know he was as wicked 
as could be a few days before he joined the church; but this 
revivalist, with his words about the beautiful beyond where 
all shall dwell together in peace and sing praises; and his 
description of that Colorado mountain where the silver 
stuck out so you could hang your hat on it, converted Pa. 
That man’s scheme was to let all the church people who 
were in good standing, and who had plenty of money, into 
the company, and when the mine begun to return dividends 
by the car load, they could give largely to the church and 
pay the debts of all the churches, and put down carpets and 
fresco the ceiling. The man said he felt that he had been 
steered on to that silver mine by a higher power, and his 
idea was to work it for the glory of the cause. He said he 
liked Pa and would make him vice-president of the com- 
pany. Pa, he bit like a bass, and I guess he invested five 
thousand dollars in stock, and Ma, she wanted to come in, 
and she put in a thousand dollars that she had laid up to 
buy some diamond ear-rings, and the man gave Pa a lot of 
stock to sell to other members of the church. They all 
went into it, even the minister. He drew his salary ahead, 
and all of the deacons they came in, and the man went back 


peck’s bad boy. 


225 


to Colorado with about thirty thousand dollars of good, 
pious money. Yesterday Pa got a paper from Colorado, 
giving the whole snap away, and the pious man has been 
spending the money in Denver, and whooping it up. Pa 
suspected something was wrong two weeks ago, when he 
heard that the pious man had been on a toot in Chicago, and 
he wrote to a man in Denver, who used to get full with Pa 
years ago when they were both on the turf; and Pa’s friend 
said the man that sold the stock was a fraud, and that he 
didn’t own no mine, and that he borrowed the samples of 
ore and silver bricks from a pawnbroker in Denver. I 
guess it will break Pa up for a while, though . he is well 
enough fixed with mortgages and things; but it hurts him to 
be took in. He lays it all to Ma — he says if she hadn’t let 
that exhorter for the silver mine go home with her this 
would not have occurred, and Ma says she believes Pa wai 
in partnership with the man to beat her out of her thousand 
dollars that she was going to buy a pair of diamond ear- 
rings with. O, it is a terror over to the house now. Both of 
the hired girls put in all the money they had, and took stock 
and they threaten to sue Pa for arson, and they are going to 
leave to-night, and Ma will have to do the work. Don’t 
you never try to get rich quick,” said the boy as he peeled a 
herring, and took a couple of crackers. 

“Never you mind me,” said the grocery man, “ they don’t 
catch me on any of their silver mines; but I hope this will 
have some influence on you and teach you to respect your 
Pa’s feelings, and not play jokes on him while he is feeling 
so bad over his being swindled.” 

“ O, I don’t know about that, I think when a man is in 
trouble, if he has a good little boy to take his mind from 
his troubles, and get him mad at something else, it rests 
him. Last night we had hot maple syrup and biscuit for 
supper, and Pa had a saucer full in front of him, just a 

15 


226 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


steaming. I could see he was thinking too much about his 
mining stock, and I thought if there was anything I could 
do to take his mind off of it and place it on something else, 
I would be doing a kindness that would be appreciated. I 

sat on the right of 
Pa, and when he 
wasn’t looking I 
pulled the table 
cloth so the saucer 
of red hot maple 
syrup dropped off 
in his lap. Well, 
you’d a dide to see 
how quick his 
thoughts turned 
from his financial 
troubles to his 
physical misfor- 
tunes. There was 
about a pint of hot 
syrup, and it went 
all over his lap, 
and you know how 
hot melted maple 
sugar is, and how 
it sort of clings 
to anything. Pa 
jumped up and 
grabbed hold of 

I TOLD PA IF HE WOULD PUT SOME TAR ON HIS LEGS. 



his pants’ legs to pull them away from hisself, and he 
danced around and told Ma to turn the hose on him, and 
then he took a pitcher of ice-water and poured it down 


peck’s bad boy. 


227 


Ais pants, and he said the condemned old table was get- 
ting so ricketty that a saucer wouldn’t stay on it, and 
I told Pa if he would put some tar on his legs, the 
same kind that he told me to put on my lip to make my 
mustache grow, the syrup wouldn’t burn so; .and then he 
cuffed me, and I think he felt better. It is a great thing to 
get a man’s mind off of his troubles, but where a man hasn’t 
got any mind like you, for instance. — ” 

At this point the grocery man picked up a fire poker, and 
the boy went out in a hurry and hung up a sign in front 
of the grocery: 


CASH PAID 
FOR FAT DOGS. 


CHAPTER V. 


HIS PA AND DYNAMITE. 


The old man selling silver stock — Fenian scare — “Dynamite” in Mil- 
waukee — The Fenian boom — “Great God, Hanner, we are blowed 
up ! ” — His Ma has lots of sand — The old man useless in trouble — 
The dog and the false teeth. 

“ I guess your Pa’s losses in the silver mine have 'made 
him crazy, haven’t they? ” said the grocery man to the bad 
boy, as he came into the store with his eye-winkers singed 
off, and powder marks on his face, and began to play on the 
harmonica, as he sat down on the end of 'a stick of stove 
wood, and balanced himself. 

“ O, I guess not. He has hedged. He got in with a 
deacon of another church, and sold some of his stock to 
him, and Pa says if I will keep my condemned mouth shut he 
will unload the whole of it, if the churches hold out. He 
goes to a new church every night there is prayer meeting or 
anything, and makes Ma go with him to give him tone, and af- 
ter meeting she talks with the sisters about how to piece a bed 
quilt, while Pa gets in his work selling silver stock. I don’t 
know but he will order some more stock from the factory^ 
if he sells all he has got,” and the boy went on playing, 
“There’s a land that is fairer than day.” 

“ But what was he skipping up street for the other night 
with his hat off, grabbing at his coat tails as though they 
were on fire? I thought I never saw a pussy man run any 
faster. And what was the celebration down on your street 
about that time? I thought the world was coming to an 


peck’s bad boy. 


229 


end,” and the grocery man kept away from the boy, for fear 
he would explode. 

“O, that was only a Fenian scare. Nothing serious. You 
see Pa is a sort of half Englishman. He claims to be an 
American citizen when he wants office, but when they talk 
about a draft he claims to be a subject of Great Britain, and 
he says they can’t touch him. Pa is a darned smart man, and 
don’t you forget it. There don’t any of them get ahead of 
Pa much. Well, Pa has said a good deal about the wicked 
Fenians, and that they ought to be pulled, and all that, and 
when I read the story in the papers about the explosion in 
the British Parliament, Pa was hot. He said the damnirish 
was ruining the whole world. He didn’t dare to say it at 
the table, or our hired girl would have knocked him silly 
with a spoonful of mashed potatoes, ’cause she is a nirish 
girl, and she can lick any Englishman in this town. Pa said 
there ought to have been somebody there to have taken 
that bomb up and throwed it in the sewer before it ex- 
ploded. He said that if he should ever see a bomb he would 
grab it right up and throw it away where it wouldn’t hurt any- 
body. Pa has me read the papers to him nights, ’cause his 
eyes have got splinters in ’em, and after I had read all 
there was in the paper, I made up a lot more and pretended 
to read it, about how it was rumored that the Fenians here 
in Milwaukee were going to place dynamite bombs at every 
house where an Englishman lived, and at a given signal 
blow them all up. Pa looked pale around the gills, but he 
said he wasn’t scared. 

“ Pa and Ma were going to call on a she-deacon that 
night, that has lots of money in the bank, to see if she 
didn’t want to invest in a dead sure paying silver mine, and 
me and my chum concluded to give them a send-off. We 
got my big black injy rubber foot ball, and painted ‘ Diny- 
might in big white letters on it, and tied a piece of tarred 


230 


peck’s bad boy. 


rope to it for a fuse, and got a big fire-cracker, one of 
those old Fourth of July horse scarers, and a basket full 
of broken glass. We put the foot ball in front of the step 
and lit the tarred rope 
and got under the step 
with the fire-crackers 
and basket, where they 



“GREAT god! manner, WE ARE BLOWED UP.” 

go down into the basement. Pa and Ma came out of the front 
door, and down the steps, and Pa saw the foot ball and the 


peck’s bad boy. 


231 


burning fuse, and he said ‘ Great God, Hanner, we areblowed 
up !’ and he started to run, and Ma she stopped to look at it. 
Just as Pa started to run I touched off the fire-cracker, and 
my chum arranged it to pour out the broken glass on 
the brick pavement just as the fire-cracker went off. 
Well, everything went just as we expected, except 
Ma. She had examined the foot-ball and concluded it 
was not dangerous, and was just giving it a kick as the 
fire-cracker went off, and the glass fell, and the fire- 
cracker was so near her that it scared her, and when Pa 
looked around Ma was flying across the sidewalk, and 
Pa heard the noise and he thought the house was blown to 
atoms. O, you’d a dide to see him go around the cor- 
ner. You could play crokay on his coat-tail, and his face 
was as pale as Ma’s when she goes to a party. But Ma 
didn’t scare much. As quick as she stopped against the 
hitching post she knew it was us boys, and she cam^e 
down there, and maybe she didn’t maul me. I cried and 
tried to gain her sympathy by telling her the fire-cracker 
went off before it was due, and burned my eye-brows off, 
but she didn’t let up until I promised to go and find Pa. 

“ I tell you, my Ma ought to be engaged by the British 
government to hunt out the dynamite fiends. She would 
corral them in two minutes. If Pa had as much sand as Ma 
has got, it would be warm weather for me. Well, me and 
my chum went and headed Pa off or I guess he would be 
running yet. We got him up by the lake shore, and he 
wanted to know if the house fell down. He said he would 
leave it to me if he ever said anything against the Fenians, 
and I told him that he had always claimed that the Fenians 
were the nicest men in the world, and it seemed to relievv 
him very much. When he got hpme and found the house 
there he was tickled, and when Ma called him an old bald- 
headed coward, and said it was only a joke of the boys with 


232 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


a foot ball, he laughed right out, and said he knew it all the 
time, and he ran to see if Ma would be scared. And then he 
wanted to hug me, but it wasn’t my night to hug and I went 
down to the theatre. Pa don’t amount to much when there 
is trouble. The time Ma had them cramps, you remember^ 
when you got your cucumbers first last season. Pa came rnea 
fainting away, and Ma said ever since they had been married 
when anything ailed her. Pa has had pains just the same as 


she has, only he grunted 
more, and thought he was 
going to die. Gosh, if I 
was a man I wouldn’t be 
sick every time one of the 
neighbors had a back ache, 
would you? ” 



“Well you can’t tell. 
When you have been mar- 
ried twenty or thirty years 
you will know a good deal 
more than you do now. 
You think you know it all, 
now, and you are pretty 
intelligent for a boy that 
has been brought up care- 


HE LOOKED JUST LIKE PA WHEN HE lessly, but there are things 


that you will learn after a 


TRIES TO SMILE. 


while that will astonish you. But what ails your Pa’s teeth? 
The hired girl was over here to get some corn meal for 
gruel, and she said your Pa was gumming it, since he lost 
his teeth.” 

“O, about the teeth. That was too bad. You see my 
chum has got a dog that is old, and his teeth have all come 
out in front, and this morning I borried Pa’s teeth before he 
got up, to see if we couldn’t fix them in the dog’s mouth, so he 


peck’s bad boy. 


233 


could eat better. Pa says it is an evidence of a kind heart 
for a boy to be good to dumb animals, but it is a darned mean 
dog that will go back on a friend. We tied the teeth in the 
dog’s mouth with a string that went around his upper jaw, 
and another around his under jaw, and you’d a dide to see 
how funny he looked when he laffed. He looked just like 
Pa when he tried to smile so as to get me to come up to him 
so he can lick me. The dog pawed his mouth a spell to get 
the teeth out, and then we gave him a bone with some meat 
on, and he began to gnaw the bone, and the teeth came off 
the plate, and he thought it was pieces of the bone, and he 
swallowed the teeth. My chum noticed it first, and he said 
we had got to get in our work pretty quick to save the plates 
and I think we were in luck to save them. I held the dog, 
and my chum, who was better acquainted with him, untied 
the strings and got the gold plates out, but there were only 
two teeth left, and the dog was happy. He woggled his tail 
for more teeth, but we hadn’t any more. I am going to 
give him Ma’s teeth some day. My chum says when a dog 
gets an appetite for anything you have got to keep giving it 
to him or he goes back on you. But I think my chum played 
dirt on me. We sold the gold plates to a jewelry man, and 
my chum kept the money. I think, as long as I furnished 
the goods, he ought to have given me something besides 
the experience, don’t you? After this I don’t have no more 
partners, you bet.” All this time the boy was marking on a 
piece of paper, and soon after he went out the grocery man 
noticed a crowd outside, and on going out he found a sign 
hanging up which read: 

: WORMY FIGS : 

: FOR PARTIES. \ 


CHAPTER VI. 


HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN. 

The grocery man shamefully abused — He gets hot — Butter, oleomar- 
garine and axle grease — the old man wears orange on St. Patrick’s 
day — He has to run for his life — the bad boy at Sunday school— 
Ingersoll and Beecher voted out — “ Mary had a little lamb.” 

“Say, will you do me a favor?” asked the bad boy of the 
grocery man, as he sat down on the soap box and put his 
wet boots on the stove. 

“ Well, y-re-s,” said the grocery man hesitatingly, with a 
feeling that he was liable to be sold. “ If you will help me 
catch the villain who hangs up those disreputable signs in 
front of my store, I will. What is it?” 

“ I want you to lick this stamp and put it on this letter. 
It is to my girl, and I want to fool her,” and the boy hand- 
ed over the letter, and stamp, and while the grocery man 
was licking it and putting it on, the boy filled his pockets 
with dried peaches out of a box. 

“ There, that’s a small job,” said the grocery man, as he 
pressed the stamp on the letter with his thumb and handed 
it back. “ But how are you going to fool her?” 

“ That’s just business,” said the boy, as he held the letter 
to his nose and smelled of the stamp. “ That will make her 
tired. You see, every time she gets a letter from me she 
kisses the stamp, because she thinks I licked it. When she 
kisses this stamp, and gets the fumes of plug tobacco, and 
stale beer, and limberg cheese, and mouldy potatoes, it will 
knock her down, and then she will ask me what ailed the 

2S4 


peck’s bad boy. 


235 


stamp, and I will tell her I got you to lick it, and then it 
will make her sick, and her parents will stop trading here, 
O, it will paralyze her. Do you know, you smell like a glue 
factory. Gosh, I can smell you all over the store. Don’t 
you smell anything that smells spoiled?” 

“ The grocery man thought he did smell something that 



THE GROCERYMAN TOOK A DRIED CODFISH BY THE TAIL. 


was rancid, and he looked around the stove and finally 
kicked the boy’s boot off the stove and said, “ It’s your 
boot burning." Gracious, open the door! It smells like a. 
hot box on a caboose. Whew! And there comes a couple 
of my best lady customers.” The ladies came in and held 
their handkerchiefs to their noses, and while they were 
trading the boy said, as though continuing the conversation: 


236 


peck’s bad boy. 


“ Yes, Pa says that last oleomargarine I got here is noth- 
ing but axle grease. Why don’t you put your axle grease 
in a different kind of a package? The only way you can tell 
axle grease from oleomargarine is in spreading it on pan- 
cakes. Pa says axle grease will spread, but your alleged 
butter just rolls right up and acts like lip salve, or ointment, 
and is only fit to use on a sore — ” 

At this point the ladies went out of the store in disgust, 
without buying anything, and the grocery man took a dried 
codfish by the tail and went up to the boy and took him by 
the neck. ‘‘Golblast you, I have a notion to kill you. You* 
have driven away more custom from this store than your 
neck is worth. Now you git,” and he struck the boy across 
the back with the codfish. 

“ That’s just the way with you all,” says the boy, as he put 
his sleeve up to his eyes and pretended to cry, “ when a fel- 
low is up in the world, there is nothing too good for him, 
but when he gets down, you maul him with a codfish. Since 
Pa drove me out of the house, and told me to go shirk for my 
living, I haven’t had a kind word from anybody. My chum’s 
dog won’t even follow me, and when a fellow gets so low 
down that a dog goes back on him there is nothing left for 
him to do but to loaf around a grocery, or sit on a jury, and 
I am too young to sit on a jury, though I know more than 
some of the dead beats that lay around the court to get on a 
jury. I am going to drown myself, and my death will be 
laid to you. They will find evidences of codfish on my 
clothing, and you will be arrested for driving me to a sui- 
cide’s grave. Good-bye. I forgive you,” and the boy started 
for the door. 

“ Hold on here,” says the grocery man, feeling that he 
had been too harsh. “ Come back here, and have some 
maple sugar. What did your Pa drive you away from home 
for?” 


peck’s bad boy. 


23? 


“O, it was on account of St, Patrick’s Day,” said the bad 
boy as he bit off half a pound of maple sugar, and dried his 
tears. “ You see. Pa never sees Ma buy a new silk handker- 
chief, but he wants it. T’other day Ma got one of these 
orange-colored handkerchiefs, and Pa immediately had a 





THE POLICEMAN TOLD PA TO GO HOME AND LOCK HIMSELF IN. 

sore throat and wanted to wear it, and Ma let him put it on. 
I thought I would break him of taking everything nice that 
Ma got, so when he went down town with the orange hand- 
kerchief on his neck, I told some of the St. Patrick boys 


238 


peck’s bad boy. 


the Third ward, who had green ribbons on, that the old duf- 
fer that was putting on style was an orange-man, and he said 
he could whip any St. Patrick’s Day man in town. The fel- 
lers laid for Pa, and when he came along orte of them threw 
a barrel at Pa, and another pulled the yellow handkerchief 
off his neck, and they all yelled ‘ hang him,’ and one grabbed 
a rope that was on the sidewalk where they were moving a 
building, and Pa got up and dusted. You’d a dide to see Pa 
run. He met a policeman and said more’n a hundred men 
had tried to murder him, and they had mauled him, and stolen 
bis yellow handkerchief. The policeman told Pa his life was 
not safe, and he better go home and lock himself in, and he 
did, and I was telling Ma about how I got the boys to scare 
Pa, and he heard it, and he told me that settled it. He said 
I had caused him to run more foot races than any champion 
pedestrian, and had made his life unbearable, and now 1 
must go it alone. Now I want you to send a couple of 
pounds of crackers over to the house, and have your boy 
tell the hired girl that I have gone down to the river to 
drown myself, and she will tell Ma, and Ma will tell Pa, and 
pretty soon you will see a bald headed pussy man whooping’ 
it up toward the river with a rope. They may think at 
times that I am a little tough, but when it comes to parting 
forever, they weaken.” 

“Well, the teacher at school says you area hardened in- 
fidel,” said the grocery man, as he charged the crackers to* 
the boy’s Pa. “ He says he had to turn you out to keep you 
from ruining the morals of the other scholars. How waji 
that?” 

“ It was about speaking a piece. When I asked him 
what I should speak, he told me to learn some speech of 
some great man, some lawyer or statesman, so I learned 
one of Bob Ingersoll’s speeches. Well you’d a dide to see 
the teacher and the school committee, when I started in on 


peck’s bad boy. 


239 


Bob Ingersoll’s lecture, the one that was in the paper 
when Bob was here. You see I thought if a newspaper 
that all the pious folks takes in their families, could publish 
Ingersoll’s speech, it wouldn’t do any hurt for a poor little 
boy who ain’t knee high to a giraffe, to speak it in school, 
but they made me dry up. The teacher is a republican, and 
when Ingersoll was speaking around here on politix, the 
time of the election, the teacher said Bob was the smartest 
man this country ever produced. I heard him say that in a 
corcus, when he went bumming around, the ward settin’ ‘em 
up nights specting to Ipe' superintendent of schools. He 
said Bob Ingersoll just took the cake, and I think it was 
darned mean in him to go back on Bob and me too, just cause 
there was no ’lection. The school committee made the 
teacher stop me, and they asked me if I didn’t know any 
other piece to speak, and I told them I knew one of Beech- 
er’s, and they let me go ahead, but it was one of Beecher’s 
new ones where he said he didn’t believe in any hell, and 
afore I got warmed up they said that was enough of 
that, and I had to wind up on “ Mary had a Little 
Lamb.” None of them didn’t kick on Mary’s Lamb and I 
went through it, and they let me go home. That’s about 
the safest thing a boy can speak in school now-days, 
either “ Mary had a Little Lamb.” or Twinkle, Twinkle Little 
Star.” That’s about up to the average intelleck of the com- 
mittee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, 
they choke him off. Well, I am going down to the river, 
and I will leave my coat and hat by the wood yard, and get 
behind the wood, and you steer Pa down there and you will 
see some tall weeping over them clothes, and maybe Pa will 
jump in after me, and then I will come out from behind the 
wood and throw in a board for him to swim ashore on. 
Good-bye. Give my pocket comb to my chum,” and the boy 
went out andhung up asigninfrontof thegrocery as follows: 


240 


1>ECK S BAD BOV. 




POP CORN THAT THE CAT HAS SLEPT 
IN, CHEAP FOR 

POP CORN BALLS FOR SOCIABLES. 



\ 



CHAPTER VII. 


HIS MA DECEIVES HIM. 

The bad boy in search of saffron — “Well, it’s a girl if you must know” 
— The bad boy is grieved at his Ma’s deception — “S-h-h tootsy go to 
sleep” — “By low, baby”— That settled it with the cat — A baby! bah! 
it makes me tired. 

“Give me ten cents worth of saffron, quick,” said the bad 
boy to the grocery man, as he came in the grocery on a 
gallop, early one morning, with no collar on and no vest. 
Pie looked as though he had been routed out of bed in a 
hurry and had jumped into his pants and boots, and put on 
his coat and hat on the run. ' 

“I don’t keep saffron,” said the grocery man as he 
picked up a barrel of ax-handles the boy had tipped over 
in his hurry. “You want to go over to the drug store on 
the corner, if you want saffron. But what on earth is the 
mat — ” 

At this point the boy shot out of the door, tipping over 
a basket of white beans, and disappearing in the drug store. 
The grocery man got down on his knees on the sidewalk 
and scooped up the beans, occasionally looking over to the 
drug store, and just as he got them picked up, the boy came 
out of the drug store and walked deliberately towards his 
home as though there was no particular hurry. The grocery 
man looked after him, took up an ax-handle, spit on his 
hands, and shouted to the boy to come over pretty soon, as 
he wanted to talk with him. The boy did not come to the 
grocery till towards night; but the grocery man had seen 
him running down town a dozen times during the day and 

241 


16 


242 


peck’s bad boy. 


once he rode up to the house with the doctor, and the gro- 
cer surmised what was the trouble. Along towards night 
the boy came in in a dejected sort of a tired way, sat down 
oh a barrel of sugar, and never spoke. 

“ What is it, a boy or girl?” said the grocery man, winking 
at an old lady with a shawl over her head, who was trying 
to hold a paper over a pitcher of yeast with her thumb. 

” How in blazes did you know anything about it?” said 
the boy, as he looked around in astonishment, and with 
some indignation, “Well, it’s a girl, if you must know, and 
that’s enough,” and he looked down at the cat playing on 
the floor with a potato, his face a picture of dejection. 

‘ O, don’t feel bad about it,” said the grocery man, as he 
opened the door for the old lady. “ Such things are bound 
to occur; but you take my word for it, that young one is go- 
ing to have a hard life unless you mend your ways. You 
will be using it for a cork to a jug, or to wad a gun with, the 
first thing your Ma knows.” 

“ I wouldn’t touch the darn thing with the tongs,” said 
the boy as he rallied enough to eat some crackers and 
cheese. “Gosh, this cheese tastes good. I hain’t had noth- 
ing to eat since morning. I have been all over this town 
trolling for nurses. They think a boy hasn’t got any feel- 
ings. But I wouldn’t care a goldarn, if Ma hadn’t been 
sending me for neuralgia medicine, and hay fever stuff all 
winter, when she wanted to get rid of me. I have come into 
the room lots of times when Ma and the sewing girl were at 
work on some flannel things, and Ma would hide them in a 
basket and send me off after medicine. I was deceived up 
to about four o’clock this morning, when Pa come to my 
room and pulled me out of bed to go over on the West 
Side after some old woman that knew Ma, and they have 
kept me whooping ever since. What does a boy want of a 
sister, unless it i^a big sister. I don’t want no sister that I 


peck’s bad boy. 


243 


have got to hold, and rock, and hold a bottle for. This 
affair breaks me all up,” and the boy picked the cheese out 
of his teeth with a sliver he cut from the counter. 

“Well, how does your Pa take it?” asked the grocery 
man, as he charged the boy’s Pa with cheese, and saffror 
and a number of such things. 

“ O, Pa will pull through. He wanted 
to boss the whole concern until Ma’s 
chum, an old woman that takes snuff» 
fired him out into the hall. 

Pa sat there on my hand- 
sled, a perfect picture 
of despair, and I 
thought it would be a 
kindness to play it 
on him. I found the 
cat asleep in the 
bathroom, and I rol- 
led the cat up in a 
shawl and brought it 
out to Pa and told 
him the nurse wanted 
him to hold the baby. 

It seemed to do Pa 
good to feel that he 
was indispensable 
around the house, 
and he took the cat 
on his lap as tenderly as you ever saw a mother hold 
her infant. Well, I got in the back hall, where he 
couldn’t see me, and pretty soon the cat began to wake up 
and stretch himself, and Pa said ’s-h-h-tootsy, go to sleep 
now, and let its Pa hold it,’ and Pa he rocked back and forth 
on the hand-sled and began to sing ‘by, low, baby.’ That 



SCAT YOU BRUTE. 


244 


peck’s bad boy. 




settled it with the cat. Well, some cats can’t stand 
music, anyway, and the more the cat wanted to get out of 
the shawl, the harder Pa sung, and bimeby I heard some- 
thing rip, and Pa yelled, ‘scat you brute,’ and when I 
looked around the corner of the hall the cat was bracing 
hisself against Pa’s vest with his toe nails, and yowling and 
Pa fell over the sled and began to talk about the hereafter 
like the minister does when he gets excited in church, and then 
Pa picked up the sled, and seemed to be looking for 
me or the cat, but both of us was offul scarce. Don’t 
you think there are times when boys and cats are kind 
of few around their accustomed haunts? Pa don’t look 
as though he was very smart, but he can hold a cat 
about as well as the next man. But I am sorry for Ma. 
She was just getting ready to go to Florida for her neuralgia, 
and this will put a stop to it, cause she has to stay and take 
care of that young one. Pa says I will have a nice time this 
summer pushing the baby wagon. By the great horn 
spoons, there has got to be a dividing line somewhere 
between business aud pleasure, and I strike** the line at 
wheeling a baby. I had rather catch a string of perch 
than to wheel all the babies ever was. They needn’t 
procure no baby on my account, if it is to amuse 
me. I don’t see why babies can’t be sawed off onto people 
that need them in their business. Our folks don’t 
need a baby any more than you need a safe, and 
there are people just suffering for babies. Say, how 
would it be to take the baby some night and leave it on 
some old bachelor’s door-step? If it had been a bicycle, or 
a breech loading shot-gun, I wouldn’t have cared but a 
baby! Bah! It makes me tired. I’d druther have a prize 
package. Well, I am sorry Pa allowed me to come home 
after he drove me away last week. I guess all he wanted 
me to come back for was to humiliate me, and send me on 


peck’s bad boy. 


345 


errands. Well, I must go and see if he and the cat have 
made up.” 

And the boy went out and put a paper sign in front of the 
store: 


LEAVE YOUR MEASURE FOR 
SAFFRON TEA, 



CHAPTER VIII. 


THE BABY AND THE GOAT. 


The bad boy thinks his sister will be a fire engine — “Old number two” 
— Baby requires goat milk — The goat is frisky — Takes to eating 
- Roman candles — The old man, the hired girl and the goat — The bad 
boy becomes teller in a livery stable. 

“Well, how is the baby?” asked the grocery man of the 
bad boy, as he came into the grocery smelling very “horsey,” 

and sat down on the 
chair with the back 
gone, and looked very 
tired. 

“ O, darn the baby. 
Everybody asks me 
about the baby as though 
it was mine. I don’t pay 
no attention to the darn 
thing, except to notice 
the foolishness going on 
around the house. Say, 
I guess that baby will 
grow up to be a fire en- 
gine. The nurse coupled 
the baby onto a section 
of rubber hose that runs 
down into a bottle of 
milk, and it began to 
get up steam and pretty soon the milk began to disappear, 
just like the water does when a fire engine couples on to a 



OLD NUMBER TWO. 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


247 


hydrant. Pa calls the baby ‘Old Number Two.’ I am 
‘Number One,’ and if Pa had a hook and ladder truck and a 
hose cart, and a fire gong he would imagine he was chief en- 
gineer of the fire department. But the baby kicks on this 
milk wagon milk, and howls like a dog that’s got lost. The 
doctor told Pa the best thing he could do was to get a goat, 
but Pa said since we ’nishiated him into the Masons with the 
goat he wouldn’t have a goat around no how. The doc. told 
Pa the other kind of a goat, I think it was a Samantha goat 
he said, wouldn’t kick with its head, and Pa sent me up into the 
Polack settlement to see if I couldn’t borrow a milk goat for 
a few weeks. I got a woman to lend us her goat till the baby 
got big enough to chew beef, for a dollar a week, and paid 
a dollar in advance, and Pa went up in the evening to help 
me get the goat. Well it was the darndest mistake you ever 
see. There was two goats so near alike you could not tell 
which was the goat we leased, and the other goat was the 
chum of our goat, but it belonged to a nirish woman. We 
got a bed cord hitched around the Irish goat, and that goat 
didn’t recognize the lease, and when we tried to jerk it along 
it rared right up, and made things real quick for Pa. I don’t 
know what there is about a goat that makes it get so spunky, 
but that goat seemed to have a grudge against Pa from the 
first. If there were any places on Pa’s manly form that the 
goat did not explore, with his head. Pa don’t know where the 
places are. O, it lammed him and when I laffed Pa got mad. 
I told him every man ought to furnish his own goats, when he 
had a baby, and I let go the rope and started off, and Pa said 
he knew how it was, I wanted him to get killed. It wasn’t 
that, but I saw the Irish woman that owned the goat coming 
around the corner of the house with a cistern pole. Just as 
Pa was getting the goat out of the gate the goat got cross- 
ways of the gate, and Pa yanked, and doubled the goat right 
up, and I thought he had broke the goat’s neck, and the 


248 


peck’s bad boy. 


woman thought so too, for she jabbed Pa with the cistern pole 
just below the belt and she tried to get a hold on Pa’s hair, 
but he had her there. No woman can get the advantage of 
Pa that way, cause Ma has tried it. Well, Pa explained it to 
the woman and she let Pa off if he would pay her two dollars 
for damages to her goat, and he paid it, and then we took 
the nanny goat, and it went right along with us. But I have 
my opinion of a baby that will drink goat’s milk. Gosh, it 
is like this stuff that comes in a spoiled cocoanut. The baby 
hasn’t done anything but blat since the nurse coupled it onto 
the goat hydrant. I had to take all my playthings out of 
the basement to keep the goat from eating them. I guess 
the milk will taste of powder and singed hair now. The goat 
got to eating some Roman candles me and my chum had 
laid away in the coal bin, and chewed them around the fur- 
nace, and the powder leaked out and a coal fell out of the 
furnace on the hearth, and you’d a dide to see Pa and the 
hired girl and the goat. You see Pa can’t milk nothing but 
a milk wagon, and he got the hired girl to milk the goat, 
and they were just hunting around the basement for the goat 
with a tin cup, when the fireworks went off. Well, there was 
balls of green, and red and blue fire, and spilled powder 
blazed up, and the goat just looked astonished, and looked 
on as though it was sorry so much good fodder was spoiled, 
but when its hair began to burn, the goat gave one snort and 
went between Pa and the hired girl like it was shot out of a 
cannon, and it knocked Pa over a wash boiler into the coal 
bin, and the hired girl in amongst the kindling wood, and 
she crossed herself and repeated the catechism, and the goat 
jumped up on the brick furnace, and they couldn’t get it 
down. I heard the celebration and went down and took Pa 
by the pants and pulled him out of the coal bin, and he said 
he would surrender and plead guilty of being the biggest 
fool in Milwaukee. I pulled the kindling wood off the hired 


peck’s bad boy. 


249 


girl, and then she got mad, and said she would milk the 
goat or die. O, that girl has got sand. She used to work 
in a glass factory. Well sir, it was a sight worth two shillings 
admission, to see that hired girl get up on a step ladder to 
milk that goat on top of the furnace, with Pa sitting on a 
barrel of potatoes, bossing the job. They are going to fix a 
gang plank to get the goat down off the furnace. The baby 
kicked on the milk last night, I guess besides tasting of 
powder and burnt hair, the milk was too warm on account of 
the furnace. Pa has got to grow a new lot of hair on the 
goat, or the woman won’t take it back. She don’t want no 
bald goat. Well, they can run the baby and goat to suit 
themselves, ’cause I have resigned. I have gone into busi- 
ness. Don’t you smell anything that would lead you to sur- 
mise that I had gone into business? No drug store this time,” 
and the boy got up and put his thumbs in the armholes of 
his vest, and looked proud. 

“O, I don’t know as I smell anything except the faint 
odor of a horse blanket. What you gone into anyway?” 
and the grocery man put the wrapping paper under the 
counter, and put the red chalk in his pocket, so the boy 
couldn’t write any sign to hang up outside. 

“You hit it the first time. I have accepted a situation of 
teller in a livery stable,” said the boy, as he searched around 
for the barrel of Cut sugar, which had been removed. 

“Teller in a livery stable! Well that is a new one on me. 
What is a teller in a livery stable?” and the grocery man 
looked pleased, and pointed the boy to a barrel of seven 
cent sugar. 

“Don’t you know what a teller is in a livery stable? It 
is the same as a teller in a bank. I have to grease the har- 
ness, oil the buggies, and curry off the horses, and when a 
man comes in to hire a horse I have to go down to the sa- 
loon and tell the livery man. That’s what a teller is. I like 


250 


peck’s bad boy. 


the teller part of it; but greasing harness is a little too rich 
for my blood, but the livery man says if I stick to it I will 
be governor some day, ‘cause most all the great men have 
begun life taking care of horses. It all depends on my girl 
whether I stick or not. If she likes the smell of horses I 
shall be a statesman, but if she objects to it and sticks up 
her nose, I shall not yearn to be governor, at the expense of 
my girl. It beats all, don’t it, that wimmin settle every great 
question. Everybody does everything to please wimmin, 
and if they kick on anything that settles it. But I must go 
and umpire that game between Pa and the hired girl, and 
the goat. Say, can’t you come over and see the baby? 
‘Taint bigger than a small sachel,” and the boy waited till the 
grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slipped 
out and put up a sign written on a shingle with white chalk: 


YELLOW SAND WANTED 
FOR 

MAPLE SUGAR. 


CHAPTER IX. 


A FUNERAL PROCESSION. 

The bad boy on crutches— “You ought to see the minister!’’— An eleven 
dollar funeral — The minister takes the lines — An earthquake— 
After the earthquake was over — The policeman fans the minister 
— A minister should have sense. 

“Well, great Julius Caesar’s bald-headed ghost, what’s 
the matter with you?’’ said the grocery man to the bad boy, 
as he came into the grocery on crutches, with one arm in a 
sling, one eye blackened, and a strip of court plaster across 
his face. “Where was the explosion, or have you been in a 
fight, or has your Pa been giving you what you deserve, 
with a club? Here, let me help you; there, sit down on that 
keg of apple-jack. Well, by the great guns, you look as 
though you had called somebody a liar. What’s the mat- 
ter?” and the grocery man took the crutches and stood 
them up against the showcase. 

“ O, there’s not much the matter with me,” said the boy 
in a voice that sounded all broke up, as he took a big apple 
off a basket, and began peeling it with his upper front teeth. 
“ If you think I’m a wreck, you ought to see the minister, 
they had to carry him home in installments, the way they 
buy sewing machines. I am all right, but they have got to 
stop him up with oakum and tar, before he will hold water 
again.” 

“ Good gracious, you have not had a fight with the min- 
ister, have you? Well, I have said all the time, and I stick 
to it, that you would commit a crime yet, and go to state's 

251 


252 


peck’s bad boy. 


prison. What was the fuss about?” and the grocery man 
laid the hatchet out of the boy’s reach for fear he would 
get excited and kill him. 

“ O, it was no fuss, it was in the way of business. You 
see the livery man that I was working for promoted me. 
He let me drive ahorse to haul sawdust for bedding, first, 
and when he found I was real careful he let me drive an 
express wagon to haul trunks. Day before yesterday, I 
think it was — yes, I was in bed all day yesterday — day be- 
fore yesterday there was a funeral, and our stable furnished 
the outfit. It was only a common, eleven dollar funeral, 
so they let me go to drive the horse for the minister — you 
know, the buggy that goes ahead of the hearse. They 
gave me an old horse that is thirty years old, that has not 
been off a walk since nine years ago, and they told me to 
give him" a loose rein, and he would go alpng all right. It’s 
the same old horse that used fo pace so fast on the ave- 
nue, years ago, but I didn’t know it. Well, I wasn’t to blame. 
I just let him walk along as though he was hauling sawdust, 
and gave him a loose rein. When we got off the pavement, 
the fellow that drives the hearse, he was in a hurry, ’cause 
his folks was going to have ducks for dinner, and he wanted 
to get back, so he kept driving along side of my buggy, and 
telling me to hurry up. I wouldn’t do it ’cause the livery 
man told me to walk the horse. Then the minister, he got 
nervous, and said he didn’t know as there was any use of 
going so slow, because he wanted to get back in time to get 
his lunch and go to a minister’s meeting in the afternoon, but 
I told him we would all get to the cemetery soon enough if 
we took it cool, and as for me I wasn’t in no sweat. Then 
one of the drivers that was driving the mourners, he came 
up and said he had tp get back in time to run a wedding 
down to the one o’clock train, and for me to pull out a little. 
I have seen enough of disobeying orders, and I told him a 


peck’s bad boy. 


253 


funeral in the hand was worth two weddings in the bush, and 
as far as I was concerned, this funeral was going to be con - 
ducted in a decorous manner; if we didn’t get back till the 
next day. Well, the minister said, in his regular Sunday 
school way, ‘ My little man, let me take hold of the lines,’ 
and like a darned fool I gave them to him. He slapped the 
old horse on the crup- 
per with the lines, 
and then jerked up, 
and the old horse 
stuck up his off ear, 
and then the hearse 
driver told the min- 
ister to pull hard and 
saw on the bit a little, 
and the old horse 
would wake up. The 
hearse driver used to 
drive the old pacer 
on the track, and he 
knew what he wan- 
ted. The minister 
took off his black kid 
gloves and put his 
umbrella down be- 
twV-en us, and pulled 
his hat down tight on 
his head, and began 
to pull and saw on the 
bit. The old cripple began to move along sort of sideways, 
like a hog going to war, and the minister pulled some more, 
and the hearse driver, who was behind, he said, so you could 
hear him clear to Waukesha, ‘Ye-e-up,’ and th^ old horse 
kept going faster, then the minister thought the procession 



“MY LITTLE MAN I GUESS YOU’D BETTER 
DRIVE.” 


254 


peck’s bad boy. 


was getting too quick, and he pulled harder, and yellco 
‘ who-a,’ and that made the old horse worse, and I looked 
through the little window in the buggy top, behind, and the 
hearse was about two blocks behind, and the driver was 
laughing, and the minister he got pale and said, ’my little 
man I guess you’d better drive,’ and I said, ‘ Not much, 
Mary Ann, you wouldn’t let me run this funeral the way I 
wanted to, and now you can boss it, if you will let me get 
out,’ but there was a street car ahead, and all of a sudden 
there was an earthquake, and when I come to there were 
about six hundred people pouring water down my neck, 
and the hearse was hitched to the fence, and the hearse 
driver was asking if my leg was broke, and a policeman was 
fanning the minister with a plug hat that looked as though 
it had been struck by a pile driver, and some people were 
hauling our buggy into the gutter, and some men were try- 
ing to take old pacer out of the. windows of the street-car, and 
then I guess I fainted away again. O, it was worse than tel- 
escoping a train loaded with cattle.” 

“Well, I swan,” said the grocery man as he put some 
eggs in a funnel shaped brown paper for a servant girl, 
“What did the minister say when he come to?” 

“Say! What could he say? He just yelled ‘whoa,’ 
and kept sawing with his hands, as though he was driving. 
I heard that the policeman was going to pull him for fast 
driving, till he found it was an accident. They told me, 
when they carried me home in a hack, that it was a wonder 
everybody was not killed, and when I got home Pa was 
going to sass me, until the hearse driver told him it was 
the minister that was to blame. I want to find out if 
they got the minister’s umbrella back. The last I see of 
it the umbrella was running up his trouser’s leg, and the 
point came out by the the small of his back. But I am 
all right, only my shoulder sprained, and my legs bruised, and 


peck’s bad boy. 


255 


my eye black. I will be all right, and shall go to work 
to-morrow, ’cause the livery man says I was the only one 
in the crowd that had any sense. I understand the min- 
ister is going to take a vacation- on account of his liver 
and nervous prostration. I would if I was him. I never 
saw a man that had nervous prostration any more 
than he did when they fished him out of the barbed wire 
fence, after we struck the street car. But that settles the 
minister business with me. I don’t drive for no more 
preachers. What I want is a quiet party that wants to go 
on a walk,” and the boy got up and hopped on one foot 
toward his crutches, filling his pistol pocket with figs as he 
hobbled along. 

“ Well, sir,” said the grocery man, as he took a chew of 
tobacco out of a pail, and offered some to the boy, knowing 
that was the only thing in the store the boy would not take, 
” Do you know I think some of these ministers have about 
as little sense on worldly matters, as anybody? Now, the 
idea of that man jerking on an old pacer. It don’t make 
any difference if the pacer was a hundred years old, he would 
pace if he was jerked on.” 

“You bet,” said the boy, as he put his crutches under his 
arms, and started for the door. “ A minister may be sound 
on the atonement, but he don’t want to saw on an old pacer. 
He may have the subject of infant baptism down finer than 
a cambric needle, but if he has ever been to college, he 
ought to have learned enough not to say ' ye-up ’ to an old 
pacer that has been the boss of the road in his time. A 
minister may be endowed with sublime power to draw sin- 
ners to repentance, and make them feel like getting up and 
dusting for the beautiful beyond, and cause them, by his 
eloquence, to see angels bright and fair in their dreams, and 
chariots of fire flying through the pearly gates and down the 
golden streets of New Jerusalem, but he wants to turn out 


/ 




256 peck’s bad BOV. 

for a street car all the same, when he is driving a 2:20 pacer 
The next time I drive a minister to a funeral, he will walk,” 
and the boy hobbled out and hung out a sign in front of the 
grocery: 


SMOKED DOG FISH AT HALIBUT 
PRICES, GOOD ENOUGH 
FOR COMPANY. 





CHAPTER X. 


THE OLD MAN MAKES A SPEECH. 

‘'C fee ^rrocery man and the bad boy have a fuss— The Bohemian band — 
The bad boy organizes a serenade — “Baby mine” — The old man 
eloquent — The Bohemians create a famine — The Y. M. C. A. 
announcement. 

“There, you drop that,” said the grocery man to the bad 
Loy, as he came limping into the store and began to fumble 
around a box of strawberries. “ I have never kicked at your 
eating my codfish, and crackers and cheese, and herring, and 
apples, but there has got to be a dividing line somewhere, 
and I make it at strawberries at six shillings a box, and 
only two layers in a box. I only bought one box, hoping 
some plumber or gas man would come along and buy it, and 
by gum, everybody that has been in the store has sampled 
a strawberry out of that box, shivered as though it was sour 
and gone off without asking the price,” and the grocery man 
looked mad, took a hatchet and knocked in the head of a 
barrel of apples, and said: “There, help yourself to dried 
apples.” 

“ O, I don’t want your strawberries or dried apples,” said 
the boy, as he leaned against a show case and looked 
at a bar of red, transparent soap. “ I was only trying 
to fool you. Say, that bar ot soap is old enough to vote. 
I remember seeing it in your show case when I was 
about a year old, and Pa came in here with me and held me 
up to the show case to look at that tin tobacco box, and that 
round zinc looking-glass, and the yellow wooden pocket 

257 


17 


258 


peck’s bad boy. 


comb, and the soap looks just the same, only a little 
faded. If you would wash yourself once in a while your 
soap wouldn’t dry up on your hands,” and the boy sat down 
on the chair without any back, feeling that he was even 
with the grocery man. 

“You never mind the soap. It is paid for, and that is 
more than your father can say about the soap that has been 
used in his house the past month,” said the grocery man, as 
he split up a box to kindle the fire. “ But we won’t quarrel. 
What was it I heard about a band 'serenading your father, 
and his inviting them in to lunch?’’ . 

“ Don’t let that get out or Pa will kill me dead. It was 
a joke. One of those Bohemian bands that goes about 
town playing tunes for pennies, was over on the next street, 
and I told Pa I guessed some of his friends who had 
heard we had a baby at the house, had hired a band 
and was coming in a few minutes to serenade him 
and he better prepare to make a speech. Pa is 
proud of being a father at his age, and he thought 
it no more than right for the neighbors to serenade 
him, and he went to loading himself for a speech, in the 
library, and me and my chum went out and told the leader 
of the band there was a family up there that wanted to have 
some music, and they didn’t care for expense, so they quit 
blowing where they was and came right along. None of 
them could understand English except the leader, and he 
only understood enough to go and take a drink when he is 
invited. My chum steered the band up to our house and 
got them to play ‘Babies on our Block,’ and ‘Baby Mine,’ 
and I stopped all the men who were going home and told 
them to wait a minute and they would see some fun; so 
when the band got through the second tune, and the Prus- 
sians were emptying the beer out of the horns, and Pa 
stepped out on the porch, there was more nor a hundred 


peck’s bad boy. 


259 


people in front of the house. You’d a dide to see Pa, when 
he put his hand in the breast of his coat, and struck an atti- 
tude. He looked like a congressman, or a tramp. The 
band was scared, cause they thought he was mad, and some 
of them were going to run, thinking he was going to throw 
pieces of brick house at them, but my chum and the leader 
kept them. Then Pa sailed in. Recommenced, ‘ Fellow Citi- 
zens,’ and then went way back to Adam and Eve, and worked 



up to the present day, giving a history of the notable people 
who had acquired children, and kept the crowd interested. I 
felt sorry for Pa, cause I knew how he would feel when he 


26o 


peck’s bad boV. 


came to find out how he had been sold. The Bohemians in 
the band that couldn’t understand English, they looked at 
each other, and wondered what it was all about, and finally 
Pa wound up by stating that it was every citizen’s duty to 
own children of his own, and then he invited the band and 
the crowd in to take some refreshments. Well, you ought 
to have seen that band come in the house. They fell over 
each other getting in, and the crowd went home, leaving Pa 
and my chum and me and the band. Eat? Well, I should 
smile. They just reached for things and talked Bohemian. 
Drink? O, no. I guess they didn’t pour it down. Pa 
opened a dozen bottles of champagne, and they fairly bathed 
in it, as though they had a fire inside. Pa tried to talk with 
them about the baby, but they couldn’t understand, and 
finally they got full and started out, and the leader asked 
Pa for three dollars, and that broke him. Pa told the leader 
he supposed the gentlemen who had got up the serenade 
had paid for the music, and the leader pointed to me and 
said I was the gentleman that got it up. Pa paid him, but he 
had a wicked look in his eye, and me and my chum lit out, 
and the Bohemians came down the street bilin’ full, with 
their horns on their arms, and they were talking Bohemian 
for all that was out. They stopped in front of a vacant 
house, and began to play; but you couldn’t tell what tune it 
was they were so full, and a policeman came along and 
drove them home. I guess I will sleep at the livery stable 
to-night, cause Pa is so offul unreasonable when anything 
costs him three dollars besides the champagne.” 

“Well, you have made a pretty mess of it,” said the 
grocery man. “ It’s a wonder your Pa does not kill you. 
But what is it I hear about the trouble at the church? They 
lay that foolishness to you.” 

“ It’s all a lie. They lay everything to me. It was some 
of them ducks that sing in the choir. I was just as much 


peck's bad boy. 


261 

surprised as anybody when it occurred. You see our minis- 
ter is laid up from the effects of the ride to the funeral, when 
he tried to run over a street car; and an old deacon who 
had symptoms of being a minister in his youth, was invited 
to take the minister’s place, and talk a little. He is an absent 
minded old party, who don’t keep up with the events of the 
day, and who ever played it on him knew that he was too pious 
to even read the daily papers. There was a notice of a choir 
meeting to be read, and I think the tenor smuggled in the 
other notice between that and the one about the weekly 
prayer meeting. Anyway, it wasn’t me, but it like to broke 
up the meeting. After the deacon read the choir notice he 
took up the other one and read, T am requested to announce 
that the Y. M. C. Association will give a friendly entertain- 
ment with soft gloves, on Tuesday evening, to which all are 
invited. Brother John Sullivan, the eminent Boston revi- 
valist will lead the exercises, assisted by Brother Slade, the 
Maori missionary from Australia. There will be no slug- 
ging, but a collection will be taken up at the door to defray 
expenses.’ Well, I thought the people in church would 
sink through the floor. There was not a person in the 
church except the poor old deacon, but who understood 
that some wicked wretch had deceived him, and I know 
by the way the tenor tickled the soprano that he did it. I 
may be mean, but everything I do is innocent, and I wouldn’t 
be as mean as a choir singer for two dollars. I felt real 
sorry for the old deacon, but he never knew what he had done, 
and I think it would be real mean to tell him. He won’t be 
at the slugging match. That remark about taking up a col- 
lection settled the deacon. I must go down to the stable- 
now, and help grease a hack, so you will have to excuse me. 
If Pa comes here looking for me, tell him you heard I was 
going to drive a picnic party out to Waukesha, and may not 
be back in a week. By that time Pa will have got over that 


Bohemian serenade,” and the boy filled his pistol pocket 
with dried apples, and went out and hung a sign in front of 
the grocery: 


STRAWBERRIES, TWO SHILLINGS 
A SMELL, 

AND ONE SMELL IS ENOUGH, 


CHAPTER XI. 


GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

The grocery man is deceived — The bad boy don’t like moving — Goes 
into the coloring business— The old man thoroughly disguised — 
Uncle Tom and Topsy — The old man arrested — What the grocery 
man thinks — The bad boy moralizes on his fate — Resolves to be 
good. 

“See here, you coon, you get out of here,” said the gro- 
cery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store with his 
face black and shining, “ I don’t want any colored boys 
around here. White boys break me up bad enough.” 

“ O, philopena,” said the bad boy, as he put his hands on 
his knees and laughed so the candy jars rattled on the 
shelves. “You didn’t know me. I am the same boy that 
comes in here and talks your arm off,” and the boy opened 
the cheese box and cut off a piece of cheese so natural that 
the grocery man had no difficulty in recognizing him. 

“ What in the name of the seven sleeping sisters have 
you got on your hands and face,” said the grocery man, as 
he took the boy by the ear and turned him around. “You 
would pass in a colored prayer meeting, and no one would 
think you were galvanized. What you got up in such an 
outlandish rig for?” 

“ Well, I’ll tell you, if you will keep watch at the door. 
If you see a bald-headed colored man coming along the 
street with a club, you whistle, and I will fall down cellar. 
The bald-headed colored man will be Pa. You see, we 
moved yesterday. Pa told me to get a vacation from the 
livery stable, and we would have fun moving. But I don’t 

263 


264 


peck’s bad boy. 


want any more fun. I know when I have got enough fun. 
Pa carried all the light things, and when it came to lifting, 
he had a crick in the back. Gosh, I never was so tired as I 
was last night, and I hope we have got settled, only some of 
the goods haven’t turned up yet. A drayman took one load 
over on the West Side, and delivered them to a house that 
seemed to be expecting a load of household furniture. He 
thought it was all right, if everybody that was moving got a 
load of goods. Well, after we got moved Pa said we must 
make a garden, and we said we would go out and spade up 
the ground and sow peas, and radishes, and beets. There 
was some neighbors lived in the next house to our new one, 
that was all wimmen, and Pa don’t like to have them think 
he had to work, so he said it would be a good joke to dis- 
guise ourselves as tramps, and the neighbors would think we 
had hired some tramps to dig in the garden. I told Pa of a 
boss scheme to fool them. I suggested that we take some 
of his shoe blacking that is put on with a sponge, and black 
our faces, and the neighbors would think we had hired an old 
colored man and his boy to work in the garden. Pa said it 
was immense, and he told me to go and black up, and if it 
worked he would black hisself. So I went and put this burnt 
cork on my face, ’cause it would wash off, and Pa looked at 
me and said it was wack, and for me to fix him up too. So 
I got the bottle of shoe blacking and painted Pa so he looked 
like a colored coal heaver. Actually, when Ma saw him she 
ordered him off the premises, and when he laffed at her and 
acted sassy, she was going to throw biling water on Pa. But 
I told her the scheme and she let up on Pa. O, you’d a dide 
to see us out in the garden. Pa looked like uncle Tom, and I 
looked like Topsy, only I ain’t that kind of a colored person. 
We worked till a boy throwed some tomato cans over the 
alley fence and hit me, and I piled over the fence after him 
and left Pa. It was my chum, and when I had caught him 


peck’s bad boy. 


265 


we put up A job to get Pa to chase us. We throwed some 
more cans, and Pa come out and my chum started and I after 
him, and Pa after both of us. He chased us two blocks and 
then we got behind a policeman, and my chum told the po- 
liceman it was a crazy old colored man that wanted to kidnap 



THE POLICEMAN TOOK PA BY THE NECK. 

US, and the policeman took Pa by the neck and was going to 
club him, but Pa said he would go home and behave. He 
was offul mad, and he went home, and we looked through the 
alley fence and Pa was trying to wash off the blacking. You 
see that blacking won’t wash off. You have to wear it off. 


266 


peck’s bad boy. 


Pa would wash his face with soap suds, and then look in the 
glass, and he was blacker every time he washed, and when 
Ma laffed at him he said the offulest words, something like 
‘sweet spirit hear my prayer,’ then he washed himself again. 
I am going to leave my burnt cork on, ’cause if I washed it 
off Pa would know there had been some smouging some- 
where. I asked the shoe store man how long it would take 
the blacking to wear off, and he said it ought to wear off in 
a week. I guess Pa won’t go out doors much, unless it is in 
the night. I am going to get him to let me go off in the 
country fishing, till mine wears off, and when I get out of 
town I will wash up. Say, you don’t think a little blacking 
hurts a man’s complexion do you, and you don’t think a man 
ought to get mad because it won’t wash off, do you?” 

“O, probably it don’t hurt the complexion,” said the 
grocery man, as he sprinkled some fresh water on the wilted 
lettuce, so it would look fresh while the hired girl was buy- 
ing some, “ and yet it is mighty unpleasant, where a man has 
got an engagement to go to a card party, as I know your 
Pa has to-night. As to getting mad about it, if I was youf 
Pa I would take a barrel stave and shatter your castle scan- 
dalous. What kind of a fate do you think awaits you when 
you die, anyway?” 

“Well, I am mixed on the fate that awaits me when I 
die. If I should go off sudden, with all my sins on my head, 
and this burnt cork on my face, I should probably be a 
neighbor to you, way down bel<^w, and they would give me 
a job as fireman, and I should feel bad for you every time I 
chucked in anuther chunk of brimstone, and thought of 
you trying to swim dog-fashion in the lake of fire, and 
straining your eyes to find an iceberg that you could crawl 
up on to cool your parched hind legs. If I don’t die slow 
so I will have time to repent and be saved, I shall be toasted 
brown. That’s what the minister says, and they wouldn’t 


peck’s bad boy. 


267 


pay him two thousand dollars a year and give him a vacation 
to tell anything that was not so. I tell you it is painful to 
think of that place that so many pretty fair average people 
here are going to when they die. Just think of it, a man 
that swears just once, if he don’t hedge, and take it back 
will go to the bad place. If a person steals a pin, just a 
small, no account pin, he is as bad as if he stole all there was 
in a bank, and he stands the best chance of going to the bad 
place. You see, if a fellow steals a little thing like a pin, he 
forgets to repent, cause it don’t seem to be worth while to 
make so much fuss about. But if a fellow robs a bank, or 
steals a whole lot of money from orphans, he knows it is a 
mighty serious matter, and he gets in his work repenting, 
too quick, and he is liable to get to the good place, while 
you, who have only stole a few potatoes out of a bushel that 
you sold to the orphan asylm, will forget to repent, and you 
will sizzle. I tell you, the more I read about being good, 
and going to heaven, the more I think a fellow can’t be too 
careful, and from this out you won’t find a better boy than I 
am. When I come in here after this and take a few dried 
peaches or crackers and cheese, you charge it right up to 
Pa, and then I won’t have it on my mind and have to answer 
for it at the great judgment day. I am going to shake my 
chum, cause he chews tobacco, which is wicked, though I 
don’t see how that can be, when the minister smokes, but I 
want to be on the safe side. I am going to be good or bust 
a suspender, and hereafter you can point to me as the boy 
who has seen the folly of an ill-spent life, and if there is 
such a thing as a fifteen year old boy, who has been a terror^ 
getting to heaven, I am the hairpin. I tell you, when 
I listen to the minister tell about the angels flying 
around there, and I see pictures of them purtier than any 
girl in this town, with chubby arms with dim'ples in the 
elbows and shoulders, and long golden hair, and think of 


268 


peck’s bad boy. 


myself here cleaning off horses in a livery stable and smell- 
ing like an old harness, it makes me tired, and I wouldn’t 
miss going there for ten dollars. Say, you would make a 
healthy angel, for a back street of the new Jerusalem, but 
you would give the whole crowd away unless you washed 
up, and sent that shirt to the Chinese laundry. Yes, sir, 
hereafter you will find me as good as I know how to be. 
Now I am going to wash up and go and help the minister 
move.” 

As the boy went out the grocery man sat for several min- 
utes thinking of the change that had come over the bad boy, 
and wondered what had brought it about, and then he went 
to the door to watch him as he wended his way across the 
street with his head down, as though in deep thought, and 
the grocery man said to himself, “that boy is not as bad as 
some people think he is,” and then he looked around and 
saw a sign hanging up in front of the store, written on a 
piece of box cover, with a blue pencil: — 


SPOILED 

CANNED HAM AND TONGUE 
GOOD ENOUGH 
FOR CHURCH PICNICS. 


and he looked after the boy who was slipping down an alley 
and said: “The condemn little whelp. Wait till I catch 
him.” 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE OLD MAN SHOOTS THE MINISTER. 

The bad boy tries to lead a different life — Murder in the air — The old 
man and his friends give themselves away — Dreadful stories of their 
wicked youth — The chicken coop invaded — The old man to the 
rescue — The minister and the deacons salted. 

“Say, I thought you was going to try to lead a different 
life,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth 
came in with his pockets full of angle worms, and wanted to 
borrow a baking powder can to put them into, while he went 
fishing, and he held a long angle worm up by the tail and 
let it wiggle so he frightened a girl that had come in after two 
cents worth of yeast, so she dropped her pitcher and went 
out of the grocery as though she was chased by an anaconda. 

“I am going to lead a different life; but a boy can’t change 
his whole course of life in a minute, can he? Grown per- 
sons have to go on probation for six months before they can 
lead a different life, and half the time they lose their cud 
before the six months expire, and have to commence again. 
When it is so all fired hard for a man that is endowed with 
sense to break off being bad, you shouldn’t expect too much 
from a boy. But I am doing as well as could be expected — 
I ain’t half as bad as I was! Gosh, why don’t you burn a 
rag? That yeast that the girl spilled on the floor smells 
like it was sick. I should think that bread that was raised 
with that yeast would smell like this cooking butter you sell 
to hired girls.” 

“Well, never you mind the cooking butter. I know my 
business. If people want to use poor butter when they have 


270 


peck’s bad boy. 


company, and then blow up the grocer before folks, I can 
stand it if they can. But what is this I hear about your Pa 
fighting a duel with the minister in your back yard, and 
wounding him in the leg, and then trying to drown himself 
in the cistern? One of your new neighbors was in here this 
morning, and told me there was murder in the air at your 
house last night, and they are going to have the police pull 
your place as a disorderly house. I think you were at the 
bottom of the whole business!” 

” Oh, it’s all a darned lie and those neighbors will find they 
better keep still about us, or we will lie about them a little. 
You see, since Pa got that blacking on his face he don’t go 
out any, and to make it pleasant for him Ma invited in a few 
friends to spend the evening. Ma has got up around, and 
the baby is a daisy, only it smells like a goat on account of 
drinking the goat’s milk. Ma invited the minister among 
the rest, and after supper the men went up into Pa’s library 
to talk. O, you think I am bad don’t you, but of the nine 
men at our house last night I am an angel compared with 
what they were when they were boys. I got into the bath- 
room to untangle my fish line, and it is next to Pa’s room, 
and I could hear everything they said, but I went away ’cause 
I thought the conversation would hurt my morals. They 
would all steal, when they were boys, but darned if I ever 
stole. Pa has stolen over a hundred wagon loads of water- 
melons, one deacon used to rob orchards, another one shot 
tame ducks belonging to a farmer, and another tipped over 
grindstones in front of the village store, at night, and broke 
them, and run, and another used to steal eggs, and go out in 
the woods and boil them, and the minister was the worst of 
the lot, ’cause he took a seine, with some other boys, and went 
to a stream where a neighbor was raising brook trout, and 
cleaned the stream out, and to ward off suspicion, he went 
to the man next day and paid him a dollar to let him fish in 


peck’s bad boy. 


271 


the stream, and then kicked because there were no trout, and 
the owner found the trout were stolen and laid it to some 
Dutch boys. I wondered, when those men were telling their 
experience, if they ever thought of it now when they were 
preaching and praying, and taking up collections. I should 
think they wouldn’t say 
a boy was going to hell 
right off ’cause he was 
a little wild nowadays, 
when he has such an 
example. Well, lately, 
somebody has been bur- 
gling our chicken coop, 
and Pa loaded an old 
musket with rock salt, 
and said he would fill 
the fellow full of salt if 
he caught him, and while 
they were talking up 
stairs Ma heard a roos- 
ter squawk, and she 
went to the stairway 
and told Pa there was 
soraebody in the hen 
house. Pa jumped up 
and told the visitors to 
follow him, and they 
would see a man run- 
ning down the alley full 
of salt, and he rushed 
out with the gun, and 

the crowd followed him. Pa is shorter than the rest, and 
he passed under the first wire clothes line in the yard all right, 
and was going for the hen house on a jump, when his neck 



MA WENT TO THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS 
AND TOLD PA. 


peck's bad boy. 


272 

caught the second wire clothes line just as the minister and 
two of the deacons caught their necks under the other wire. 
You know how a wire, hitting a man on the throat, will set 
him back, head over appetite. Well, sir, I was looking out of 
the back window, and I wouldn’t be positive, but I think they 



I THOUGHT OF THE CISTERN. 

all burned double back somer saults,and struck on their ears. 
Anyway, Pa did, and the gun must have been cocked, or it 
struck the hammer on a stone, for it went off, and it was 
pointed toward the house, and three of the visitors got 
salted. The minister was hit the worst, one piece of salt tak- 
ing him in the hind leg, and the other in the back, and he 
yelled as though it was dynamite. I suppose when you 
shoot a man with salt, it smarts, like when you get corned 
beef brine on your chapped hands. They all yelled, and Pa 


peck’s bad boy. 


273 


seemed to have been knocked silly, some way, for he pranced 
around and seemed to think he had killed them. He swore 
at the wire clothes line, and then I missed Pa and heard a 
splash like when you throw a cat in the river, and then I 
thought of the cistern, and I went down and we took Pa by 
the collar and pulled him out. O, he was awful damp. No 
sir, it was no .duel at all, but a naxident, and I didn’t have 
anything to do with it. The gun wasn’t loaded to kill, and 
the salt only went through the skin, but those men did yell. 
Maybe it was my chum that stirred up the chickens, but I 
don’t know. He has not commenced to lead a different 
life yet, and he might think it would make our folks sick if 
nothing occurred to make them pay attention. I think where 
a family has been having a good deal of exercise, the way 
ours has, it hurts them to break off too suddenly. But the 
visitors went home, real quick, after we got Pa out of the 
cistern, and the minister told Ma he always felt when he was 
in our house, as though he was on the verge of a yawning 
crater, ready to be engulfed any minute, and he guessed he 
wouldn’t come any more. Pa changed his clothes and told 
Ma to have them wire clothes lines changed for rope ones. 
I think it is hard to suit Pa, don’t you?” 

“ O, your Pa is all right. What he needs is rest. But why 
are you not working at the livery stable? You haven’t been 
discharged, have you?” And the grocery man laid a little 
lump of concentrated lye, that looked like maple sugar on a 
cake of sugar that had been broken, knowing the boy would 
nibble it. 

“ No, sir, I was not discharged, but when a livery man 
lends me a kicking horse to take my girl out riding, that 
settles it. I asked the boss if I couldn’t have a quiet horse 
that would drive himself if I wound the lines around the 
whip, and he let me have one he said would go all day with- 
out driving. You know how it is, when a fellow takes a girl 
18 


274 


peck’s bad boy. 


out riding he don’t want his mind occupied holding lines. 
Well, I got my girl in, and we went out on the Whitefish 
Bay road, and it was just before dark, and we rode 
along under the trees, and I wound the lines around 
the whip, and put one arm around my girl, and patted her 
under the chin with my other hand, and her mouth 
looked so good, and her blue eyes looked up at me and 
twinkled as much as to dare me to kiss her, and I was 
all of a tremble, and then my hand wandered around by her 
ear and I drew her head up to me and gave her a smack. 
Say, that was no kind of a horse to give to a young fellow 
to take a girl out riding. Just as I smacked her I felt as 
though the buggy had been struck by a pile-driver, and 
when I looked at the horse he was running away and kick- 
ing the buggy, and the lines were dragging on the ground. 
I was scared, I tell you. I wanted to jump out but my girl 
threw her arms around my neck and screamed, and said we 
would die together, and just as we were going to die the 
buggy struck a fence and the horse broke loose and went off, 
leaving us in the buggy tumbled down by the dash board, 
but we were not hurt. The old horse stopped and went to 
chewing grass and looked up at me as though he wanted to 
say ‘ philopena.’ I tried to catch him, but he wouldn’t catch, 
and then we waited till dark and walked home, and I told 
the livery man’what I thought of such treatment, and he said 
if I had attended to my driving, and not kissed the girl, I 
would have been all right. He said I ought to have told 
him I wanted a horse that wouldn’t shy at kissing, but how 
did I know I was going to get up courage to kiss her. A 
livery man ought to take it for granted that when a young 
fellow goes out with his girl he is going to kiss her, and give 
him a horse according. But I quit him at once. I won’t 
work for a man that hasn’t got sense. Gosh! What kind 
of maple sugar is that? Jerusalem! Whew, give me some 


peck’s bad boy. 


275 




water! O, my, it is taking the skin off my mouth!” 

The grocery man got him some water and seemed sorry 
that the boy had taken the lump of concentrated lye by mis- 
take, and when the boy went out the grocery man pounded 
his hands on his knees and laughed, and presently he went 
out in front of the store and found a sign: 

: FRESH LETTS, BEEN PICKED : 

: MORE’N A WEEK * 

: TUFFER’N TRIPE. i 




CHAPTER XIII. 


THE BAD BOY A THOROUGHBRED. 

The had boy with a black eye— A poor friendless girl excites his pity— 
Proves himself a gallant knight — The old man is charmed at his 
son’s courage — The grocery man moralizes — Fifteen Christs in Mil- 
waukee — The tables turned — The old man wears the boy’s old 
clothes. 

“Ah, ha, you have got your deserts at last,” said the gro- 
cery man to the bad boy, as he came in with one eye black, 
and his nose peeled on one side, and sat down on a board 
across the coal scuttle, and began whistling as unconcerned 
as possible. “ What’s the matter with your eye?” 

“ Boy tried to gouge it out without my consent,” and the 
bad boy took a dried herring out of the box and bogan peel- 
ing it. “ He is in bed now, and his ma is poulticing him, 
and she says he will be out about the last of next week.” 

“O, you are going to be a prize fighter, ain’t you?” said 
the grocery man, disgusted. “ When a boy leaves a job 
where he is working, and goes to loafing around, he be- 
comes a fighter the first thing. What your Pa ought to do 
is bind you out with a farmer, where you would have to 
work all the time. I wish you would go away from here, 
because you look like one of these fellows that comes up 
before the police judge Monday morning, and gets thirty 
days in the house of correction. Why don’t you go out and 
loaf around a slaughter house, where you would look ap- 
propiate?” and the grocery man took a hair-brush and 
brushed some sugar and tea, that was on the counter, into 
the sugar barrel. 


276 


peck's bad boy. 


277 


“Well, if you have got through with your sermon, I will 
toot a little on my horn,” and the boy threw the remains of 
the herring over behind a barrel of potatoes, and wiped his 
hands on a coffee sack. “ If you had this black eye, and 
got it the way I did, it would be a more priceless gem in 
the crown of glory you hope to wear, than any gem you can 
get by putting quarters in the collection plate, with the 
holes filled with lead, as you did last Sunday, when I was 
watching you. O, didn’t you look pious when you picked 
that filled quarter out, and held your thumb over the place 
where the lead was. The way of the black eye was this. I 
got a job tending a soda-water fountain, and last night, just 
before we closed, there was two or three young loafers in 
the place, and a girl came in for a glass of soda. Five years 
ago she was one of the brightest scholars in the ward school, 
when I was in the intermediate department. She was just 
as handsome as a peach, and everybody liked her. At re- 
cess she used to take my part when the boys knocked me 
around, and she lived near us. She had a heart as big as 
that cheese box, and I guess that’s what’s the matter. Any- 
way, she left school, and then it was said she was going to 
get married to a fellow who is now in the dude business, 
but he went back on her, and after awhile her ma turned her 
out doors, and for a year or two she was jerking beer in a ' 
concert saloon, until the mayor stopped concerts. She * 
tried hard to get sewing to do, but they wouldn’t have her, 

I guess ’cause she cried so much when she was sewing, and 
the tears wet the cloth she was sewing on. Once I asked 
Pa why Ma didn’t give her some sewing to do, and he said 
for me to dry up and never speak to her if I met her on the 
street. It seemed tough to pass her on the street when she 
had tears in her eyes as big as marbles, and not speak to her 
when I know her so well, and she had been so kind to me 
at school just ’cause the dude wouldn’t marry her, but I 


278 


peck’s bad boy. 


wanted to obey Pa, so I used to walk around a block when 
I see her coming, ’cause I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. 
Well, last night she came in the store, looking pretty shab^ 
by, and wanted a glass of soda, and I gave it to her, and O, 
how her hand trembled when she raised the glass to her 



U, HOW HER HAND TREMBLED WHEN SHE RAISED THE GLASS. 


lips, and how wet her eyes were, and how pale her face was. 
I choked up so I couldn’t speak when she handed me the 
nickel, and when she looked 'up at me and smiled just like 
she used to, and said I was getting to be almost a man since 
we went to school at the old school house, and put her 
handkerchief to her eyes, by gosh, my eyes got so full I 



peck’s bad boy. 


279 


couldn’t tell whether it was a nickel or a lozenger ^he gave 
me. Just then one of those loafers began to laugh at her, 
and call her names, and say the police ought to take her up 
for a stray, and he made fun of her until she cried some more, 
and I got hot, and went around to where he was, and told 
him if he said another unkind word to that girl I would maul 
him. He laughed and asked if she was my sister, and I told 
him that a poor, friendless girl, who was sick and in distress, 
and who was insulted, ought to be every boy’s sister, for a 
minute, and any boy who had a spark of manhood, should 
protect her, and then he laughed and said I ought to be one 
of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and he took hold of her 
faded shawl and pulled the weak girl against the showcase, 
and said something mean to her, and she looked as though 
she wanted to die, and I mashed that boy one right on the 
nose. Well, the air seemed to be full of me for a minute, 
’cause he was bigger than me, and he got me down, and got 
his thumb in my eye. I guess he was going to take my eye 
out, but I turned him over and got on top, and I mauled 
him until he begged, but I wouldn’t let him up till he asked 
the girl’s pardon, and swore he would whip any boy that 
insulted her, and then I let him up, and the girl thanked 
me; but I told her I couldn’t speak to her, ’cause she was 
tough, and Pa didn’t want me to speak to anybody who was 
tough; but if anybody ever insulted her so she had to cry, 
that I would whip him if I had to take a club. I told Pa 
about it, and I thought he would be mad at me for taking 
the part of a girl that was tough, but, by gosh. Pa hugged me, 
and the tears came in his eyes, and he said I had got 
good blood in me, and I did just right; and if I would show 
him the father of the boy that I whipped, Pa said he could 
whip the old man, and Ma said for me to find the poor 
girl and send her up to the house, and she would give cher 
a job making pillow cases and night shirts. Don’t it seem 


28 o 


PECK S BAD BOY 


darn queer to you that everybody goes back on a poor girl 
’cause she makes a mistake, and the blasted whelp that is to 
blame, gets a chromo? It makes me tired to think of it,” 
and the boy got up and shook himself, and looked in the 
cracked mirror hanging upon a post, to see how his eye 
was getting along.” 

“ Say, young fellow, you are a thoroughbred,” said the 
grocery man, as he sprinkled some water on the asparagus 
and lettuce, “ and you can come in here and get all the her- 
ring you want, and never mind the black eye. I wish I had 
it myself. YesJ it does seem tough to see people never 
allow a girl to reform. Now,in Bible times, the Saviour forgave 
Mary or somebody, I forget now what her name was, and 
she was a better girl than ever. What we need is more of 
the spirit of Christ, and the world would be better.” 

“ What we want is about ten thousand Christs. We ought 
to have ten or fifteen right here in Milwaukee, and they 
would find plenty of business, too. But this climate seems 
to be too rough. Say, did I tell you about Pa and Ma hav- 
ing trouble?” 

“No, what’s the row?” 

“Well, you see Ma wants to economize all she can, and 
Pa has been getting thinner since he quit drinking and re- 
formed, and I have kept on growing until I am bigger than 
he is. Funny, ain’t it, that a boy should be bigger than his 
Pa? Pa wanted a new suit of clothes, and Ma said she 
would fix him, and so she took one of my old suits and made 
it over for Pa; and he wore them a week before he knew it 
was an old suit made over, but one day he found a handful 
of dried up angle worms in the pistol pocket that I had for- 
got when I was fishing, and Pa laid the angje worms to Ma, 
and Ma had to explain that she made over one of my old 
suits for Pa. He was mad and took them off and threw 
them out the back window, and swore he would never hu- 


miliate himself by wearing his son’s old clothes. Ma tried 
to reason with him, but he was awfully worked up, and said 
he was no charity hospital, and he stormed around to find 
his old suit of clothes, but Ma had sold them to a plaster 
of Paris image peddler, and Pa hadn’t anything to wear, and 
he wanted Ma to go out in the alley and pick up the suit he 
threw out the window; but a rag man had picked them up and 
was going away, and Pa, he grabbed a linen duster and put it on 
and went out after the rag picker, and he run, and Pa after him; 
and the rag man told a policeman there was an escaped luna- 
tic from the asylum, and he was chasing people all over the 
city, and the policeman took Pa by the linen ulster, and pulled 
it off, and he was a sight when they took him to the police 
station. Ma and me had to go down and bail him out, and the 
police lent us a tarpaulin to put over Pa, and we got him 
home, and he is wearing his summer pants while the tailor 
makes him a new suit of clothes. I think Pa is too excitable, 
and too particular. I never kicked on wearing Pa’s old 
clothes, and I think he ought to wear mine now. Well, I 
must go down to the sweetened wind factory, and jerk soda,” 
and the boy went . out and hung up a sign in front of the 
store: 


SPIN AGE FOR GREENS, THAT 
THE CAT HAS MADE 
A NEST IN OVER SUNDAY. 


CHAPTER XIV, 


ENTERTAINING Y. M. C. A. DELEGATES. 

The bad boy ministers at the Y. M: C. A. water fountain — The delegates 
flood themselves with soda— Two delegates dealt to his Ma — The 
night key — The fall of the flower stand— Delegates in the cellar all 
night — The bad boy’s girl is working his reformation. 

“Well, how’s your eye?” said the grocery man to the bad 
boy, as he blew in with the wind on the day of the cyclone, 
and left the door open. “Say, shut that door. You want to 
blow everything out of the store? Had any more fights, 
protecting girls from dudes?” 

“ No, everything is quiet so far. I guess since I have got 
a record as a fighter, the boys will be careful who they in- 
sult when I am around. But I have had the hardest week I 
ever experienced, jerking soda for the Young Men’s 
Christian Association,” said the boy, as he peeled a banana. 

“ What do you mean, boy? Don’t cast any reflections on 
such a noble Associatton. They don’t drink, do they?” 

“Drink! O, no! They don’t drink anything intoxicating, 
but when it comes to soda they flood themselves. You know 
there has been a National Convention of delegates from all 
the Young Men’s Christian Associations of the whole 
country, about three hundred, here, and our store is right on 
the street where they passed four times a day, and I never 
saw such appetites for soda. There has been one continual 
fizz in our store since Wednesday. The boss wanted me to 
play it on some of them by putting some brandy in with the 
perfumery a few times, but I wouldn’t do it. I guess a few 
weeks ago, before I had led a different life, I wouldn’t had 


peck’s bad boy. 


283 


to be asked twice to play the game on anybody. But a man 
can buy soda of me and be perfectly safe. Of course, if a 
man winks, when I ask him what flavor he wants, and says 
‘never mind,’ I know enough to put in brandy. That is diff- 
erent, But I wouldn’t smuggle it into a man for nothing. 
This Christian Association Convention has caused a coldness 
between Pa and Ma though.” 

“How’s that? Your Pa isn’t jealous, is he?” and the gro- 
cery man came around from behind the counter to get the 
latest gossip to retail to the hired girls who traded with him. 

“Jealous nothin’,” said the boy, as he took a few raisins 
out of a box. “You see, the delegates were shuffled out to 
all the church members to take care of, and they dealt two 
to Ma, and she never told Pa anything about it. They came to 
supper the first night, and Pa didn’t get home, so when they 
went to the Convention in the evening, Ma gave them a 
night key, and Pa came home from the boxing match about 
eleven o’clock, and Ma was asleep. Just as Pa got most of 
his clothes off, he heard somebody fumbling at the front 
door, and he thought it was burglars. Pa has got nerve 
enough, when he is on the inside of the house and the bur- 
glars are on the outside. He opened a window and looked 
out and saw two suspicious looking characters trying to pick 
the lock with a skeleton key, and he picked up a new slop- 
jar that Ma had bought when we moved, cover and all, and 
dropped it down right between the two delegates. Gosh, if 
it had hit one of them, there would have been the 
solemnest funeral you ever saw. Ju.st as it struck, they got 
the door opened and came into the hall, and the wind was 
blowing pretty hard and they thought a cyclone had taken 
the cupola off the house. They were talking about being 
miraculously saved, and trying to strike a match on their 
wet pants, when Pa went to the head of the stairs and 
pushed over a wire stand filled with potted plants, which 


284 


peck’s bad boy. 


struck pretty near the delegates, and one of them said the 
house was coming down sure, and they better go into the 
cellar, and they went down and got behind the furnace. Pa 
called me up and wanted me to go down cellar and teH the 
burglars we were onto them, and for them to get out, but I 
wasn’t very well, so Pa locked his door and went to bed. I 
guess it must have been half-an-hour before Pa’s cold feet 
woke Ma up, and then Pa told her not to move for her life, 
cause there were two of the savagest looking burglars that 
ever was, rumaging over the. house. Ma smelled Pa’s breath 
to see if he had got to drinking again, and then she got up 
and hid her oraide watch in her shoes, and her Onalaska 
diamond ear-rings in the Bible, where she said no burglar 
would ever find them, and Pa and Ma laid awake till day- 
light, and then Pa said he wasn’t afraid, and he and Ma went 
down. cellar. Pa stood on the bottom stair and looked 
around, and one of the delegates said, ‘ Mister, is the storm 
over, and is your family safe?’ arid Ma recognized the voice 
and said, ‘ Why, its one of the delegates. What are you do- 
ing down there?’ and Pa said, ‘ What’s a delegate?’ and then 
Ma explained it, and Pa apologized, and the delegate said 
it was no matter as they had enjoyed themselves real well 
in the cellar. Ma was mortified most to death, and the del- 
egate told her it was all right. She was mad at Pa, first, but 
when she saw the broken slop-bowl on the front steps, and 
the potted plants in the hall, she wanted to kill Pa, and I 
guess she would only for the society of the delegates. She 
couldn’t help telling Pa that he was a bald headed old fool, 
but Pa didn’t retaliate — he is too much of a gentleman to talk 
back in company. All he said was that a woman who is old 
enough to have delegates sawed off on her, ought to have 
sense enough to tell her husband, and then they all drifted 
off into conversation about the convention and the boxing 
match, and everything was all right on the surface; but after 


peck’s bad boy. 


285 


breakfast, when the delegates went to the convention, I no- 
ticed Pa went right down town and bought a new slop-jar 
and some more plants. Pa and Ma didn’t speak all the fore- 
noon, and I guess they wouldn’t up to this time, only Ma’s 
bonnet came home from the milliner’s and she had to have 
some money to pay for it. Then she called Pa ‘ pet,’ and 
that settled it. When Ma calls Pa ‘ pet,’ that is twenty-five 
dollars. ‘ Dear, old darling,’ Ineans fifty dollars. But, say, 
those Christian young men do a heap of good, don’t they. 
Their presence seems to make people better. Some boys 
down by the store were going to tie a can on a dog’s tail, 
yesterday, and somebody said, ‘ here comes the Christian 
Association,’ and those bad boys let the dog go. They tried 
to find the dog after the crowd had got by, but the dog knew 
his business. Well, I must go down and charge the ^oda 
fountain for a picnic that is expected from the country.” 

“ Hold on a minute,” said the grocery man as he wound 
a piece of brown paper around a cob and stuck it in a syrup 
jug he had just filled for a customer, and then licked his 
fingers. “ I want to ask you a question. What has caused 
you to change so from being bad. You were about as bad 
as they make ’em, up to a few weeks ago, and now you 
seem to have a soul, and get in your work doing good about 
as well as any boy in town. What is it that ails you?” 

” Oh, sugar, I don’t want to tell,” said the boy, as he 
blushed and wiggled around on one foot, and looked silly; 
“ but if you won’t laugh, I will tell you. It is my girl that 
has made me good. It may be only temporary. If she 
goes back on me I may be tough again; but if she continues 
to hold out faithful I shall be a daisy all the time. Say, did 
did you ever love a girl ? It would do you good, if you loved 
anybody regular old fashioned the way I do, people could 
send little children here to trade, and you wouldn’t palm off 
any wilted vegetables on to them, or give them short weight 


286 


peck's bad boy. 


— if you was in love, and felt that the one you loved saw 
every act of yours, and you could see her eyes every minute, 
you would throw away anything that was spoiled, and not 
try to sell it, for fear you would offend her. I don’t think 
any man is fit to do business honestly unless he is in love, 



I COULD SEE MY GIRL’S BANGS RAISE RIGHT UP. 


or has been in love once. Now I couldn’t do anything 
wrong if I tried, because I should hear the still small voice 
of my girl saying to me ‘Hennery, let up on that.’ I slipped 
up on a banana peel, yesterday, and hurt myself, and I was 
just going to say something offul, and I could see my girl’s 
bangs raise right up, and there was a pained look in her face, 


I 


peck’s bad boy. 287 

and a tear in her eye, and, by gosh, I just smiled and looked 
tickled till her hair went down and the smile came back 
again to her lips, though it hurt me like blazes where I 
struck the sidewalk. I was telling Pa about it, and asked 
him if he ever felt as though his soul was going right out 
toward somebody, and he said he did once on a steamboat 
d^cursion; but he ate a lemon and got over it. Pa thinks it 
is my liver, and wants me to take pills, but I tell you, boss, 
it has struck in me too deep for .pills, unless it is one that 
^ weighs about a hundred and forty pounds, and wears a hat 
with a feather on. Say, if my girl should walk right into a 
burning lake of red-hot lava, and beckon me to follow, 

I would take a hop, skip and jump, and — ” 

“O give us a rest,” said the grocery man, as he took 
a basin of water and sprinkled the floor, preparatory to 
sweeping out. “ You have got the worst case I ever saw, 
and you better go out and walk around a block,” and the 
boy went out, and forgot to hang out any sign. 







CHAPTER XV. 


HE TURNS SURE. 

The bad boy quits jerking soda — Enters the dramatic profession — 
“What’s a super” — The privileges of a supe’s father — Behind the 
scenes — The bad boy has played with McCullough — “I was the 
populace” — Plays it on his Sunday school teacher — “I prithee, au 
reservior, I go hence!” 

“You look pretty sleepy,” said the grocery man to the 
bad boy, as he came in the store yawning, and stretched 
himself out on the counter with his head on a piece of brown 
wrapping paper, in reach of a box of raisins, “what’s the 
matter? Been sitting up with your girl all night?” 

“Naw! I wish I had. Wakefulness with my girl is 
sweeter and more restful than sleep. No, this is the result 
of being a dutiful son, and I am tired. You see Pa and Ma 
have separated. That is, not for keeps, but Pa has got 
frightened about burglars, and he gets up into the attic to 
sleep. He says it is to get fresh air, but he knows better. Ma 
has got so accustomed to Pa’s snoring that she can’t go to 
sleep without it, and the first night Pa left she didn’t sleep a 
wink, and yesterday I was playing on an old accordion 
that I traded a dog collar for after our dog was poisoned, 
and when 1 touched the low notes I noticed Ma dozed off to 
sleep, it sounded so much like Pa’s snore, and last night Ma 
made me set up and play for her to sleep. She rested 
splendid, but I am all broke up, and I sold the accordion 
this morning to the watchman who watches our block. It is 
queer what a different effect music will have on different 
people. While Ma was sleeping the sleep of innocence 
under the influence of my counterfeit of Pa’s snore, the night- 

288 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


289 


watchman was broke of his rest by it, and he bought it of 
me to give it to the son of an enemy of his. Well, I have 
quit jerking soda.” 

‘‘No you don’t tell me,” said the grocery man as he 



MA MADE ME PLAY FOR HER TO SLEEP. 


moved the box of raisins out of reach. “You never will 
amount to anything unless you stick to one trade or profes- 
sion. A rolling hen never catches the early angleworm.” 

“O, but I am all right now. In the soda water business^ 
there is no chance for genius to rise unless the soda fountain 
explodes. It is all wind, and one gets tired of the constant 
fizz. He feels that he is a fraud, and when he puts a little 
syrup in a tumbler, and fires a little sweetened wind and 
water in it until the soap suds fills the tumbler, and charges 
ten cents for that which only costs a cent, a sensitive soda 


19 


290 


peck’s bad boy. 


jerker, who has reformed, feels that it is worse than three 
card monte. I couldn’t stand the wear on my conscience, so 
I have got a permanent job as a super, and shall open the 
1st of September.” 

“Say, what’s a super? It isn’t one of these free lunch 
places, that the mayor closes at midnight, is it?” and the 
grocery man looked sorry. 

“ O, thunder, you want salt on you. A super is an ad- 
junct of the stage. A supe is a fellow that assists the stars 
and things, carrying chairs and taking up carpets, and sweep- 
ing the sand off the stage after a dancer has danced a jig, 
and he brings beer for the actors, and helps lace up corsets, 
and anything he can do to add to the effect of the play. 
Privately, now, I have been acting as a supe for a long time, 
on the sly, and my folks didn’t know anything about it, but 
since I reformed and decided to be good, I felt it my duty 
to tell Ma and Pa about it. The news broke Ma all up, at 
first, but Pa said some of the best actors in this country 
were supes once, and some of them were now, and he thought 
suping would be the making of me. Ma thought going on 
the stage would be my ruination. She said the theater was 
the hot-bed of sin, and brought more ruin than the church 
could head off. But when I told her that they always gave 
a supe two or three extra tickets for his family, she said the 
theater had some redeeming features, and when I said my 
entrance upon the stage would give me a splendid oppor- 
tunity to get the recipe for face powder from the actresses, 
for Ma, and I could find out how the actresses managed to 
get number four feet into number one shoes, Ma said she 
wished I would commence suping right off. Ma says there 
are some things about the theater that are not so all-fired bad, 
and she wants me to get seats for the first comic opera that 
comes along. Pa wants it understood with the manager that 
a supe's father has a right to go behind the scenes to see 


peck’s bad boy. 


291 


that no harm befalls him, but I know what Pa wants. He 
may seem pious, and all that, but he likes to look at ballet 
girls better than any meek and lowly follower I ever see, and 
some day you will hear music in the air. Pa thinks theaters 
are very bad, when he has to pay a dollar for a reserved seat, 
but when he can get in for nothing as a relative of one of the 
‘perfesh’, the theater has many redeeming qualities. Pa and 
Ma think I am going into the business fresh and green, but 
I know all about it. When I played with McCullough here 
once — ” 

“ Oh, what are you giving us,” said the grocery man in 
disgust, “when you played with McCullough! What did 
you do?” 

“What did I do? Why, you old seed cucumber, the 
whole play centered around me. Do you remember the 
scene in the Roman forum, where McCullough addressed the 
populace of Rome? I was the populace. Don’t you remember 
a small fellow standing in front of the Roman orator taking 
it in; with a night shirt on, with bare legs and arms? That 
was me, and everything depended on me. Suppose I had 
gone off the stage at the critical moment, or laughed when 
I should have looked fierce at the inspired words of the 
Roman senator, it would have been a dead give away on 
McCullough. As the populace’ of Rome I consider myself 
a glittering success, and Me took me by the hand when they 
carried Caesar’s dead body out, and he said, ‘ us three did 
ourselves proud.’ Such praise from McCullough is seldom 
accorded to a supe. But I don’t consider the populace of 
the imperial city of Rome my master piece. Where I excel 
is in coming out before the curtain between the acts, and un- 
hooking the carpet. Some supes go out and turn their backs ' 
to the audience, showing patches on their pants, and rip up 
the carpet with no style about them, and the dust flies, and 
the boys yell ‘ supe, ’ and the supe gets nervous and forgets 


292 


peck’s bad boy. 


his cue, and goes off tumbling over the carpet, and the 
orchestra leader is afraid the supe will fall on him. But I 
go out with a quiet dignity that is only gained by experience, 
and I take hold of the carpet the way Hamlet takes up the 
skull of Yorick, and the audience is paralyzed. I kneel down 
on the carpet, to unhook it, in a devotional sort of a way that 
makes the audience bow their heads as though they were in 
church, and before they realize that I am only a supe I have 
the carpet unhooked and march out the way a ’Piscopal 
minister does when he goes out between the acts at church 
to change his shirt. They never ‘guy’ me, ’cause I act well 
my part. But I kick on holding dogs for actresses. Some 
supes think they are made if they can hold a dog, but I have 
an ambition that a pug dog will not fill. I held Mary 
Anderson’s cud of gum once, while she went on the stage, 
and when she came off and took her gum her fingers 
touched mine and I had to run my fingers in my hair to 
warm them, like a fellow does when he has been snow- 
balling. Gosh, but she would freeze ice cream without salt. 
I shall be glad when the theatrical season opens, ’cause we 
actors get tired laying off.” 

“ Well, I’d like to go behind the scenes with you some 
night,” said the grocery man, offering the bad boy an orange 
to get solid with him, in view of future complimentary 
tickets. “ No danger, is there?” 

“ No danger if you keep off the grass. But you’d a dide 
to see my Sunday school teacher one Saturday night last 
summer. He keeps books in a store, and is pretty soon 
week days, but he can tell you more about Daniel in the 
lion’s den on Sunday than anybody. He knew I was solid 
at the theater, and wanted me to get him behind the scenes 
one night, and another supe wanted to go to the sparring 
match, and I thought it wouldn’t be any harm to work my 
teacher in, so I got him a job that night to hold the dogs 


peck’s bad boy. 


293 


for Uncle Tom’s show. He was in one of the wings holding 
the chains, and the dogs were just anxious to go on, and it 
was all my teacher could do to hold them. I told him to 
wind the chains around his wrists, and he did so, and just 
then Eliza began to skip across the ice, and we sicked the 



JUST THEN ELIZA BEGAN TO SKIP ACROSS THE ICE. 


blood hounds on before my teacher could unwind the chains 
from his wrists, and the dogs pulled him right out on the 
the stage, on his stomach, and drawed him across, and he 
jerked one dog and kicked him in the stomach, and the dog 
turned on my teacher and took a mouthful of his coat tail 
and shook it, and I guess the dog got some meat, anyway 
the teacher climbed up a step-ladder, and the dogs treed 


294 


peck's bad boy. 


him, and the step-ladder fell down, and we grabbed the 
dogs and put some court plaster on my teacher’s nose, 
where the fire extinguisher peeled it, and he said he would 
go home, cause the theater was demoralizing in its tenden- 
cies. I spose it was not right, but when the teacher stood 
up to hear our Sunday school lesson the next day, ’cause he 
was tired where the dog bit him, I said ‘ sick-em,' in a whis- 
per, when his back was turned, and he jumped clear over to 
the Bible class, and put his hands around to his coat tail as 
though he thought the Uncle Tom’s Cabin party were giving 
a matinee in the church. The Sunday school lesson was about 
the dog’s licking the sores of Lazarus, and the teacher said we 
must not confound the good dogs of Bible time with the 
savage beasts of the present day, that would shake the 
daylights out of Lazarus, and make him climb the cedars of 
Lebanon quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and go 
off chewing a cud of bitter reflection on Lazaraus’ coat tail. 
I don’t think a Sunday school teacher ought to bring up 
personal reminiscences before a class of children, do you? 
Well, some time next fall you put on a clean shirt and a 
pair of sheet iron pants, with stove legs on the inside, and I 
will take you behind the scenes to see some good moral 
show. In the meantime, if you have an occasion to talk 
with Pa, tell him that Booth, and Barrett, and Keene com- 
menced on the stage as supes, and Salvini roasted peanuts 
in the lobby of some theater. I want our folks to feel that 
I am taking the right course to become a star. I prythee au 
reservoir. I go hence! but to return. Avaunt!” And the 
boy walked out on his toes a la Booth. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

UNCLE EZRA PAYS A VISIT. 

Uncle Ezra causes the bad boy to backslide — Uncle Ezra and the old 
man were bad pills — Their record is awful — Keeping Uncle Ezra on 
the ragged edge — The bed slats fixed — The old man tangled up — 
This world is not run right — Uncle Ezra makes him tired. 

“ I hear yOur Uncle Ezra is here on a visit,” said the 
grocery man to the bad boy. “I suppose you have been 
having a high old time. There is nothing that does a boy 
more good than to have a nice visit with a good uncle, and 
hear him tell about old times when he and the boy’s father 
were boys together.” 

“Well I don’t know about it,” said the boy, as he took 
a stick of macaroni, and began to blow paper wads through 
it at a wood sawyer, who was filing a saw outside the door. 
“When a boy who has been tough has got his pins all set 
to reform, I don’t think it does him any good to have a real 
nice Uncle come to the house visiting. Anyway, that’s my 
experience. I have backslid the worst way, and it is going 
to take me a month after Uncle Ezra goes away to climb up 
to the grace that I have fallen from. It is darn discourag- 
ing,” said the boy as he looked up to the ceiling in an in- 
nocent sort of a way, and hid the macaroni under his coat 
when the wood sawyer who had been hit in the neck, dropped 
his saw and got up mad. 

“What’s the trouble, your uncle has the reputation where 
he lives of being one of the pillars of society. But you 
can’t tell about these fellows when they get away from home. 
Does he drink?” 


m 


296 


peck’s bad boy. 


No, he don’t drink; but as near as I can figure it, he and 
Pa were about tli^ worst pills in the box, when they were 
young. I don’t want you to repeat it, but when Pa and Ma 



grandfather’s shot gun. 


were married they eloped. Yes, sir — actually ran away and 
defied their parents — and they had to hide about a week, 
for fear Ma’s father would fill Pa so full of cold lead that 
he would sink if he fell in the water. Pa has been kicked 


peck’s bad boy. 


297 


over the fence and chased down alleys dozens of times by 
Ma’s grandfather, when he was sparking Ma, and Ma was a 
terror too, ’cause her mother couldn’t do anything with her, 
though she is awful precise now, and wants everybody to be 
too good. Why, Ma’s mother used to warm her ears, and 
shake the daylights out of her, but it didn’t do any good. She 
was mashed on Pa, and there was no cure for her except to 
have Pa prescribed for her as a husband, and they ran away. 
Uncle Ezra told me all about it. Ma hain’tgotany patience 
with girls now days that have minds of their own about fel- 
lows, and she thinks their parents ought to have all the say. 
Well, maybe she thinks she knows all about it. But when 
people get in love it is the same now as when Pa and Ma 
were trying to keep out of the reach of my grandfather’s 
shot gun. But Pa and Uncle Ezra and Ma are good friends, 
and they talk over old times and have a big laugh. I guess 
Uncle Ezra was too much for Pa in joking when they were 
boys ’cause Pa told me that all rules against joking were 
suspended while Uncle Ezra was here, and for me to play 
anything on him I could. I told Pa I was trying to lead a 
different life, but he said what I wanted to do was to make 
Uncle Ezra think of old times, and the only way was to 
keep him on the ragged edge. I thought if there was any- 
thing I could do to make it pleasant for my Uncle, it w'as 
my duty to do it, so I fixed the bed slats on the spare bed 
so they would fall down at 2 A. M. the first night, and then I 
retired. At two o’clock I heard the awfulest noise in the 
spare room, and a howling and screaming, and I went down 
to meet Uncle Ezra in the hall, and he asked me what was 
the matter in there, and I asked him if he didn't sleep in 
the spare room, and he said no, that Pa and Ma was in there, 
and he slept in their room. Then we went in the spare 
room and you’d a dide to see Pa. Ma had jumped out when 
the slats first fell; and was putting her hair up in curl papers 


298 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


when we got in, but Pa was all tangled up in the springs and 
things. His head had gone down first, and the mattress 
and quilts rolled over him, and he was almost smothered 
and we had to take the bedstead down to get him out, the 
way you have to unharness a horse when he runs away and 
falls down before you can get him up. Pa was mad, but 
Uncle Ezra laughed at him, and told him he was only found- 
ered, and all he wanted was a bran mash and some horse 
liniment, and he would come out all right. Uncle Ezra 
went out into the hall to get a pail of water to throw on Pa, 
’cause he said Pa was afire, when Pa asks me why in blazes I 
didn’t fix the other bed slats, and I told him I didn’t know 
they were going to change beds, and then Pa said don’t let it 
occur again. Pa lays everything to me. He is the most 
changeable man I ever saw. He told me to do everything 
uncle Ezra wanted me to do, and then, when I helped Uncle 
P.zra to play a joke on Pa, he was mad. Say, I don’t think 
this world is run right, do you? 1 haven’t got much time 
to talk to you to-day, ’cause Uncle Ezra and me are going 
fishing, but don’t it strike you that it is queer that parents 
trounce boys for doing just what they did themselves? 
Now, I have got a friend whose father is a lawyer. That 
lawyer would warm his boy if he should tell a lie or asso- 
ciate with anybody that was bad, and yet the lawyer will 
defend a man he knows is guilty of stealing, and get him 
clear and take the money he got from the thief, who stole 
it, to buy the same boy a new coat to wear to church, and 
he will defend a man who committed murder, and make an 
argument to the jury that will bring tears to their eyes, and 
they will clear the murderer. Qu^er, ain’t it? And say, how 
it that we send missionaries to Burmah, to convert them 
from heathenism, and the same vessel that takes the mis- 
sionaries there carries from Boston a cargo of tin gods to 
sell to the heathen? Why wouldn’t it be better to send the 


peck’s bad boy. 


299 

missionaries to Boston? I think the more a boy learns the 
more he gets mixed.” 

“Well, how’s your theater? Have any of the great 
actors supported you lately ?” said the grocery man, to change 
the subject. 



“No, we are all off on vacations. Booth and Barrett, 
and lots of the stars, are gone to Europe, and the rest work 
down to less high-toned places. Some of the theater girls 



300 


peck’s bad boy. 


are waiters at summer resorts, and lots are visiting relatives 
on farms. I tell you, it makes a difference whether the rel- 
atives are visiting you or you are visiting them. Actors and 
actresses feel awfully when an old granger comes to town 
where they are playing, and wants to see them. They are 
ashamed of his homespun clothes, and cowhide boots, and 
they want to meet him in an alley somewhere, or in the 
basement of the theater, so other actors will not laugh at 
their rough relatives, but when the season is over an actor 
who can remember a relative out on a farm, is tickled to 
death, and the granger is all right enough there, and the 
actor does not think of the rough nutmeg grater hands, and 
the blistered nose, as long as the granger relative will put up 
fried pork and things, and ‘support’ the actor. My Uncle 
Ezra is pretty rough and it makes me tired sometimes when 
I am down town with him to have him go into a store where 
there are' girl clerks and ask what things are for, that I know 
he don’t want, and make the girls blush, but he is a good 
hearted old man, and he and me are going to make a mint 
of money during vacation. He lives near a summer resort 
hote^ and has a stream that is full of minnows, and we are 
going to catch minnows and sell them to the dudes for fish 
bait. He says some of the fools will pay ten cents apiece 
for minnows, so if we sell a million minnows, we make a 
fortune. I am coming back in September and will buy out 
your grocery. Say let me have a pound of rasins, and I’il 
pay you when I sell my uncle’s minnows.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

HE DISCUSSES THEOLOGY. 


Meditations on Noah’s ark — The garden of Eden — The ancient dude— 
Adam with a plug hat on — “I’m a thinker from Thinkersville ” — 
The apostles in a patrol wagon — Elijah and Elisha — The prodigal 
son — A veal pot pie for dinner. 

“ What are you sitting there for a half-an-hour for, star- 
ing at vacancy?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he 
sat on the stool by the stove one of these foggy mornings, 
when everybody feels like quarreling, with his fingers clasped 
around his knee, looking as though he did not know enough 
to last him to bed. “ What you thinking about anyway?” 

“ I was wondering where you would have been to-day if 
Noah had run his ark into such a fog as this, and there had 
been no fog-horn on Mount Ararat, and he had passed by 
with his excursion and not made a landing, and had floated 
around on the freshet until all the animals starved, and the 
ark had struck a snag and burst a hole in its bottom. I 
tell you, we can all congratulate ourselves that Noah hap- 
pened to blunder on that high ground. If that ark had 
been lost, either by being foundered, or being blowed up by 
Fenians because Noah was an Englishman, it would have 
been cold work trying to populate this world. In that case 
* another Adam and Eve would have to be made out of dirt 
and water, and they might have gone wrong again and failed 
to raise a family, and where would we have been. I tell you 
when I think of the narrow escapes we have had, it is a 
wonder to me that we have got along as well as we have.” 
“Well, when did you get out of the asylum?” said the 
801 


302 


peck’s bad boy. 


grocery man, who had been standing back with his mouth 
open looking at the boy as though he was crazy. “ What 
you want is to have your head soaked. You are getting so 
you reach out too far with that small mind of yours. In 
about another year you will want to run this world yourself. 
I don’t think you are reforming very much. It is wicked 
for a boy your size to argue about such things. Your folks 
better send you to college.” 

“What do I want to go to college for, and be a heart- 
less hazer, and a poor baseball player? I can be bad 
enough at home. The more I read, the more I think. I 
don’t believe I can ever be good enough to go to heaven, 
anyway, and I guess I will go into the newspaper business, 
where they don’t have to be good, and where they have 
passes everywhere. Do you know, I think when I was built 
they left out a cog wheel or something in my head. I can’t 
think like some boys. I get to thinking about Adam and 
Eve in the garden of Eden, and of the Dude with the cloven 
hoof that flirted with Eve, and treated her and Adam to the 
dried apples, and I can’t think of them as some boys do, 
with a fig leaf polonaise, and fig leaf vests. I imagine them 
dressed up in the latest style. I know it is wrong, but that 
is what a poor boy has to suffer who has an imagination, and 
where did I get the imagination? This confounded imagi- 
nation of mine shows me Adam with a plug hat on, just like 
our minister wears, and a stand-up collar, and tight pants, 
and peaked-toed shoes, and Eve is pictured to me with a 
crushed-angle-worm colored dress, and brown striped stock- 
ings, and newspapers in her dress to make it stick out, and 
a hat with dandelions on, and a red parasol, and a lace hand- 
kerchief, which she puts to her lips and winks with her left 
eye to the masher who is standing by the corner of the 
house, in an attitude, while the tail with the dart on the end 
is wound around the rain water barrel, so Eve won’t see it 


peck’s bad boy. 


303 


and get scared. Say, don’t you think it is better for a boy 
to think of our first parents with clothes on, than to think of 
them almost naked, exposed to the inclemency of the 
weather, with nothing but fig leaves pinned on? I want to 
do right, as near as I can, but I had rather think of them 
dressed like our folks are to-day, than to think of them in a 
cyclone with leaves for wearing apparel. Say, it is wrong 
to fight, but don’t you think if Adam had put on a pair of 
boxing gloves, when he found the devil was getting too 
fresh about the place, and knocked him out in a couple of 
rounds, and pasted him in the nose, and fired him out of the 
summer garden, that it would have been a big thing for this 
world. Now, honest?” 

“ Look-a-here,” said the grocery man, who had been 
looking at the boy in dismay, “You better go right 
home, and let your Ma fix up some warm drink for 
you, and put you to bed. You are all wrong in the head, 
and if you are not attended to you will have brain fever. I 
tell you, boy, you are in danger. Come, I will go home with 
you.” 

“ O, danger, nothin’. I am just telling how things look 
to a boy who has not got the facilities for being too good in 
his youth. Some boys can take things as they read them, 
and not think any for themselves, but I am a Thinker from 
Thinkersville, and my imagination plays the dickens with me. 
There is nothing I read about old times, but what I compare 
it with the same line of business at the present day. Now 
when I think of the fishermen of Gallilee, drawing their 
seines, I wonder what they would have done if there had 
been a law against hauling seines, as there is in Wisconsin 
to-day, and I can see a constable with a warrant for the 
arrest of the Galilee fishermen, snatching the old apostles 
and taking them to the police station in a patrol wagon. I 
know it is wrong to think like that, but how can I help it? 


304 


peck’s bad boy. 


Say, suppose those fishermen had been out hauling their 
seines, and our minister should come along with his good 
clothes on, his jointed rod, his nickel-plated reel, and his 
silk fish line, and his patent fish hook, and put a frog on the 
hook and cast his line near the Galilee fisherman and go to 



I KNOW ITS WRONG TO THINK SO, BUT HOW CAN I HELP IT? 


trolling for bass? What do you suppose the lone fisherman 
of the Bible times would have thought about the gall of the 
jointed rod fisherman? Do you suppose they would have 
thrown stones in the water where he was trolling, or would 
they have told him there was good trolling around a point 
about half a mile up the shore, where they knew he wouldn’t 


peck’s bad BOV. 


305 


get a bite in a week, the way a fellow at Muskego lake lied to 
our minister a spell ago? I tell you, boss, it is a sad thing 
for a boy to have an imagination,” and the boy put his other 
knee in the sling made by the clenched fingers of both 
hands, and waited for the grocery man to argue with him. 

” I wish you would go away from here. I am afraid of 
you,” said the grocery man. ” I would give anything if your 
Pa or the minister would come in and have a talk with you. 
Your mind is wandering,” and the grocery man went to the 
door and looked up and down the street to see if somebody 
wouldn’t come in and watch the crazy boy, while he went to 
breakfast. 

” O, Pa and the minister can’t make a first payment on 
me. Pa gets mad when I ask questions, and the minister 
thinks I am past redemption. Pa said yesterday that bald- 
ness was caused, in every case, by men’s wearing plug hats, 
and when I asked him where the good Elisha, (whom the 
boys called ‘ go up old bald head,’ and the bears had a free 
lunch on them,) got his plug hat. Pa said school was dis- 
missed and I could go. When the minister was telling me 
about the good Elijah going up through the clouds in a 
chariot of fire, and I asked the minister what he thought 
Elijah would have thought if he had met our Sunday school 
superintendent coming down through the clouds on a bicy- 
cle, he put his hand on my head and said my liver was all 
wrong. Now, I will leave it to you if there was anything 
wrong about that. Say, do you know what I think is the 
most beautiful thing in the Bible? ” 

“ No I don’t,” said the grocery man, “ and if you want to 
tell it, I will listen just five minutes, and them I am going 
to shut up the store and go to breakfast. You make me 
tired.” 

“ Well, I think the finest thing is that story about the 
prodigal son, where the boy took all the money he could 
20 


3o6 


PECK S BAD BOY. 


scrape up and went out West to paint the town red. He 
spent his money jn riotous living, and saw everything that 
was going on, and got full of benzine, and struck all the gangs 
of toughs, both male and female, and his stomach went back 
on him, and he had malaria, and finally he got to be a cow- 
boy, herding hogs, 
and had to eat husks 
that the pigs didn’t 
want, and got pretty 
low down. Then he 
thought it was a pretty 



mh 


FINALLY HE GOT TO BE A COWBOY, HERDING HOGS. 


good scheme to be getting around home, where they had three 
meals a day, and spring mattresses; and he started home 
beating his way on trains, and he didn’t know whether the 
old man would receive him with open arms or pointed boots; 
but the old man came down to the depot to meet him, and 
right there before the passengers, and the conductor and 


brakemen, he wasn’t ashamed of his boy, though he was 
ragged, and looked as though he had been on the war path ; 
and the old man fell on his neck and wept, and took him 
home in a hack, and had veal pot pie for dinner. That’s 
what I call sense. A good many men now days would have 
put the police on the tramp and had him ordered out of 
town. What, are you going to close up the store? Well, I 
will see you later. I want to talk with you about something 
that is weighing on my mind,” and the boy got out just in 
time to save his coat tail from being caught in the door, and 
when the grocery man- came back from breakfast he found a 
sign in front: 

: THIS STORE IS CLOSED TILL \ 

: FURTHER NOTICE. \ 

: SHERIFF. : 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE DEPARTED ROOSTER. 

The grocery man discourses on death — The dead rooster — A biograph- 
ical sketch — The tenderness between the rooster and his faithful 
hen — The hen retires to set — The chickens ! — The proud rooster 
dies — The fickle hen flirting in indecent haste. 

“ Why don’t you take an ice pick and clean the dirt out 
from under your finger nails?” said the grocery man to the 
bad boy, as he came into the store and stroked the cat the 
wrong way as she lay in the sun on the counter, on a quire 
of manilla paper. 

“ Can’t remove the dirt for thirty days — it is an emblem 
of mourning. Had a funeral at our house, yesterday,” and 
the boy took a pickle out of a tub and put it in the cat’s 
mouth, and shut her teeth together on it, and then went to 
the showcase, while the grocery man, whose back had been 
turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the 
cat jumped into the dried apple barrel and began to paw and 
scratch with all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was go- 
ing to have a fit. 

“ I hadn’t heard about it,” said the grocery man, as he 
took the cat by the neck and tossed her out in the back 
shed into an old oyster box full of sawdust, with a part- 
ing injunction that if she was going to have fits she had 
better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. “Death 
is always a sad thing to contemplate. One day we are 
full of health and joy and cold victuals, and the next we 
are screwed down in a box, a few words are said over our re- 
maias, a few tears are shed, and there is a race to see who 


peck’s bad boy. 


309 


shall get back from the cemetery first; and though we may 

think we are an im- 
portant factor in the 
world’s progress, and 
sometimes feel as 
though it would be 
unable to put up mar- 
gins and have to stop 
the deal, the world 
goes right along, and 
it must annoy people 
who die to realize 
that they don’t count 
for game. The great- 
est man in the world 
is only a nine spot 
when he is dead be- 
cause somebody else 
takes the tricks the 
dead man ought to 
have taken. But, say, 
who is dead at your 
house?” 

“Our rooster ! 
Take care, don’t you 
hit me with that can- 
vassed ham!” said the 
boy as the grocery 
man looked mad to 
learn that there was 
nobody dead but a 
rooster, when he had 

I NEVER SAW A MORE PERFECT PICTURE pr^ached such a ser- 
OF DEVOTION, mon on the subjectr 



310 


peck’s bad boy. 


“Yes, how soon we are forgotten when we are gone. Now, you 
would have thought that rooster’s hen would have remained 
faithful to him for a week at least. I have watched them all 
the spring and I never saw a more perfect picture of devotion 
than that between the bantam rooster and his hen. They were 
constantly together and there was nothing too good for her. 
He would dig up angle worms and call her, and when she came 
up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, 
$he would look so proud of her rooster, and he would 
straighten up and look as though he was saying to her, T’m 
A daisy,’ and then she would look at him as if she would like 
to bite him, and just as she was going to pick up the worm 
he would snatch it and swallow it himself, and chuckle and 
walk around and be full of business, as though wondering 
why she didn’t take the worm after he had dug it for her, 
and then the hen would look disappointed at first, and then 
she would look resigned, as much as to say,‘Worms are too 
rich for my blood anyway, and the poor dear rooster needs 
them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing;’ 
and she would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on 
the sly for fear he would see her and complain because she 
didn’t divide. O, I have never seen anything that seemed to 
me so human as the relations between that rooster and ben. 
He seemed to try to do everything for her. He would 
make her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he wonld 
try to cackle, and crow over it as though he had laid it, and 
she would get off in a corner and cluck in a modest, retiring 
manner, as though she wished to convey the idea to the serv- 
ant girls in the kitchen that the rooster had to do all the 
hard work, and she was only a useless appendage, fit only 
for society and company for him. But I was disgusted with 
him when the poor hen was setting. The first week that 
she sat on the eggs he seemed to get along first-rate, 
because he haa h couple of flower beds to dig up, which a 


peck’s bad boy. 


311 

press of business had caused him to neglect before, and a 
couple of neighbors’ gardens to destroy, so he seemed to be 
glad to have his hen retire to her boudoir to set, but after 
he had been shooed out of the gardens and flower beds he 
seemed to be nervous, and evidently wanted to be petted, 
and he would go near the hen and she would seem to tell 
him to go and take a walk around the block, because she 
hadn’t time to leave her business, and if she didn’t attend to 
it they would have a lot of spoiled eggs on their hand, and 
no family to bring up. He would scold, and seem to tell 
her that it was all foolishness, that for his part he didn’t 
want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. He would 
seem to argue with her that a brood of chickens would be a 
dead give-aw'ay on them both, and they would be at once 
classed as old folks, while if they were alone in the world 
they would be spring chickens, and could go in young soci- 
ety, but the hen would scold back, and tell him he ought to 
be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go off 
mad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor’s 
hen house and sometimes he wouldn't come back till 
the next day. The hen would be sorry she had spoken so 
cross, and would seem pained at his going away and would 
look anxiously for his return, and when he came back after 
being out in the rain all night, she would be solicitio'us after 
his health, and tell him he ought to wrap something around 
him, but he acted as though he didn’t care for his health, 
and he would go out again and get chilled through. Finally 
the hen come off the nest with ten chickens, and the rooster 
seemed very proud, and when anybody came out to have a 
look at them he would crow, and seemed to say they were 
all his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching 
them, and if it had been him that was setting on them he 
could have hatched them out in a week, or died a trying. 
But the exoosure told on him, and he went into a decline, 


312 peck’s bad boy. 

and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I 
never see a hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did.' 
She looked pale, and her eyes looked red, and she seemed 
to be utterly crushed. If the chickens, which were so young 
they could not realize that they were little orphans, became 
noisy, and got to pulling and hauling over a worm, and con- 

ducted them- 
selves in an un- 
seemly manner 
she would talk 
to them in hen 
language, with 
tears in her eyes, 
and it was a 
picture of woe. 
But the next day 
a neighboring 
rooster got to 
lookingthrough 
the fence from 
the alley, and 
trying to flirt 
with her. At 
first she was in- 
dignant, and 
seemed to tell 
him he ought 
to go about his 
business, and leave her alone, but the dude kept clucking, and 
pretty soon the widowed hen edged up toward the fence, and 
asked him to come in, but the hole in the feenc was too small 
for him, and then the chickens went out in the alley, and the 
hen followed them out. I shall always think she told the 
chickens to go out, so she would have an excuse to go after 



WITH A PAPER PINNED ON ITS BREAST. 


peck’s bad boy. 


313 


them, and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect 
shame. She is out in the alley half the time, and I could 
cuff her. It seems to me wrong to so soon forget a deceased 
rooster, but I suppose a hen can’t be any more than human. 
Say, you don’t want to buy a dead rooster do you? You 
could pick it and sell it to somebody that owes you, for a 
spring chicken.” 

“No, I don’t want any deceased poultry, that died of grief,- 
and you better go home and watch your hen, or you will be 
bereaved some more,” and the grocery man went out in the 
shed to see if the cat Was over its fit, and when he came back 
the boy was gone, and after a while the grocery man saw a 
crowd in front of the store and he went out and found the 
dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pin- 
ned on its breast on which was a sign: 


THIS RUSTER DIED OF COLIX 
FOR SALE CHEAP 
TO BOARDINGHOUSE ONLY, 


He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, 
and looked up and down the street for the bad boy, and 
went In and hid a raw hide where he could reach it handy. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. 

Uncle Ezra returns — The basket on the steps — The anonymous letter — 
“O, brother that 1 should live to see this day!” An ugly Dutch 
baby — The old man wheels the baby now — A frog in the old man's 
bed. 

I see your Pa wheeling the baby around a good deal 
lately” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the 
store one evening to buy a stick of striped pepperment candy 
for the baby, while his Pa stopped the baby wagon out 
on the sidwalk and waited for the. boy, with an expression of 
resignation on his face. • 

“What’s got into your Pa to be nurse girl this hot 
weather?” 

“O, we have had a circus at our house,” said the boy, as 
he came in after putting the candy in the baby’s hand. 
“You see. Uncle Ezra came back from Chicago, where he 
had been to sell some cheese, and he stopped over a 
couple of days with us, and he said we must play one more 
joke on Pa before he went home. We played it, and it is a 
wonder I am alive, because I never saw Pa so mad in my 
life. Now this is the last time I go into any joke on shares. 
If i play any more jokes I don’t want any old uncle to give 
me away.” 

“What is it?” said the grocery man, as he took a stool 
and sat out by the front door beside the boy who was trying 
to eat a box of red raspberries on the sly. 

“ Well, uncle Ezra and me bribed the nurse girl to dress 
up the baby one evening in some old, dirty baby clothes, be- 


PEKC’S BAD BOY. 


315 


longing to our wash woman’s baby, and we put it in a basket 
and placed the basket on the front door step, and put a note 
in the basket and addressed it to Pa. We had the nurse girl 
stay out in front, by the basement stairs, so the baby couldn’t 
get away and she rung the bell and got behind something. 
Ma and Pa, and Uncle Ezra and me were in the back parlor 
when the bell rung, and Ma told me to go the door, and I 
brought in the basket, and set it down, and told Pa there was 
a note in it for him. Ma, she came up and looked at the 
note as Pa tore it open, and Uncle Ezra looked in the basket 
and sighed. Pa read part of the note and stopped and 
turned pale, and sat down, then Ma read some of it, and she 
didn’t feel very well, and she leaned against the piano and 
grated her teeth. The note was in a girl’s handwriting, and 
was like this: 


“Old Bald Headed Pet: — 

You will have to take care of your child, 
because I cannot. Bring it up tenderly, and don’t, for heaven’s sake, 
send it to the Foundling Asylum. I shall go drown myself. 

Your loving, 


Almira.” 


“What did your Ma say?” said the grocery man, becom- 
ing interested. 

“ O, Ma played her part well. Uncle Ezra had told her 
the joke, and she said, ’retch,’ to Pa, just as the actresses 
do on the stage, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. . Pa 
said it was ‘ false,’ and Uncle Ezra said, ‘ O, brother, that I 
should live to see this day,’ and I said, as I looked in the 
basket, ‘ Pa, it looks just like you, and I’ll leave it to Ma.’ 
That was too much, and Pa got mad in a minute. He always 
gets mad at me. But he went up and looked in the basket, 
and he said it was some Dutch baby, and was evidently from 
the lower strata of society, and the unnatural mother wanted 


\ 


3iS 


peck’s bad boy 


to get rid of it, and he said he didn’t know any ‘ Almira’ at all. 
When he called it a Dutch baby, and called attention to its 
irregular features, that made Ma mad, and she took it up 
out of the basket and told Pa it was a perfect picture of 



O, BROTHER, THAT I SHOULD LIVE TO SEE THIS DAY. 


him, and tried to put it in Pa’s arms, but he wouldn’t have 
it, and said he would call the police and have it taken to the 
poor house. Uncle Ezra took Pa in a corner and told him the 
best thing he could do would be to see ‘Almira’ and com- 
promise with her, and that made Pa mad, and he was ing 


Deck’s bad boV. 


317 


to hit Uncle Ezra with a chair. Pa was perfectly wild, and 
if he had a gun I guess he would have shot all of us. Ma 
took the baby up stairs and had the girl put it to bed, and 
after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was all a 
joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the bas- 
ket, and then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle 
Ezra never to darken his door again. I don’t know how he 
made up with ma for calling it a Dutch baby from the Polack 
settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every day, and 
Ma and Pa have got so they speak again.” 

“ That was a mighty mean trick, and you ought to be 
ashamed of yourself. Where do you expect to fetch up 
when you die?” said the grocery man. 

“I told Uncle Ezra it was a mean trick,” said the boy, 
” but he said that wasn’t a priming to some of the tricks Pa 
had played on him years ago. He says Pa used to play 
tricks on everybody. I may be mean, but I never played 
wicked jokes on blind people as Pa did when he was a boy. 
Uncle Ezra says once there was a party of four blind vocal- 
ists, all girls, gave an entertainment at the town where Pa 
lived, and they stayed at the hotel where Pa tended bar. 
Another thing I never sold rum, either, as Pa did. Well, 
before the blind vocalists went to bed Pa caught a lot of 
frogs and put them in the beds where the girls were to sleep, 
and when the poor blind girls got into bed the frogs hopped 
over them, and the way they got out was a caution. It is 
bad enough to have frogs hopping all over girls that can 
see, but for girls that are deprived of their sight, and don’t 
know what anything is, except by the feeling of it, it looks 
to me like a pretty tough joke. I guess Pa is sorry now for 
what he did, ’cause when uncle Ezra told the frog story, I 
brought home a frog and put it in Pa’s bed. Pa has been 
afraid of paralysis for years, and when his leg, or anything 
gets asleep, he thinks that is the end of him. Before bed- 


3i8 


peck’s bad boy. 


time I turned the conversation onto paralysis,and told about 
a man about Pa’s age having it on the West Side, and Pa was 
nervous, and soon after he retired I guess the frog wanted to 
get acquainted with Pa, ’cause he yelled six kinds of murder, 
and we went into his room. You know how cold a frog is? 
Well, you’d dide to see Pa. He laid still, and said his end 
had come, and Uncle Ezra asked him 
if it was the end with the head on or 
the feet, and Pa told him paralysis 
had marked him for a victim, and 
he could feel that his left leg 



WELL, HERE COMES OUR BABY WAGON. • 


was becoming dead. He ' said he could feel the cold, 
clammy hand of death walking up him, and he wanted 
Ma to put a bottle of hot water to his feet. Ma got 
the bottle of hot water and put it to Pa’s feet, and the cork 
came out and Pa said he was dead, sure enough, now, because 
he was hot in the extremities, and that a cold wave 
was going up his leg. Ma asked him where the cold wave 



peck’s bad boy. 


319 


was, and he told her, and she thought she would rub it, but 
she began to yell the same kind of. murder Pa did, and she 
said a snake had gone up her sleeve. Then I thought it was 
time to stop the circus, and I reached up Ma’s lace sleeve 
and caught the frog by the leg and pulled it out, and told 
Pa I guessed he had taken my frog to bed with him, and I 
showed it to him, and then he said I did it, and he would 
maul me so I could not get up alone, and he said that a boy 
that would do such a thing would go to hell as sure as 
preachin’ and I asked him if he thought a man who put frogs 
in the beds with blind girls, when he was a boy, would get 
to heaven, and then he told me to lite out, and I lit. I guess 
Pa will feel better when Uncle Ezra goes away, ’cause he 
thinks Uncle Ezra talks too much about old times. Well, 
here comes our baby wagon, and I guess Pa has done pen- 
ance long enough, and I will go and wheel the kid awhile. 
Say, you call Pa in, after I take the baby wagon, and tell 
him you don’t know how he would get along without such a 
nice boy as me, and you can charge it in our next month’s 
bill.” 


CHAPTER XX. 


FOURTH OF JULY MISADVENTURES. 

Trouble in the pistol pocket — The grocery man’s cat — The bad boy 
a ministering angel — Asleep on the Fourth of July — Goes with 
his girl to the Soldiers’ Home — Terrible Fourth of July misad- 
ventures — The girl who went out comes back a burnt offering. 

“ Here, condemn you, you will pay for that cat,” said the 
grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store all 
broke up, the morning after the 4th of July. 

“What cat?” said the boy, as he leaned against the 
zinc ice. box to cool his back, which had been having trouble 
with a bunch of fire crackers in his pistol pocket. “We haven’t 
ordered any cat from here. Who ordered any cat sent to our 
house? We get our sausage at the market,” and the boy rubbed 
some cold cream on his nose and eyebrows where the skin 
was off. 

“Yes, that is all right enough,” said the grocery man, 
“but somebody who knew where that cat slept, in the box 
of sawdust, back of the store, filled it full of fire crackers, 
Wednesday forenoon, when I was out to see the procession, 
and never notified the cat, and touched them off, and the 
cat went through the roof of the shed, and she hasn’t got 
hair enough left on her to put in tea. Now, you didn’t show 
up all the forenoon, and I went and asked your Ma where 
you was, and she said you had been sitting up four nights 
straight along v/ith a sick boy in the Third Ward, and you 
was sleeping all the forenoon the 4th of July. If that is so. 
that lets you out on the cat, but it don’t stand to reason. 
Own up, now, was you asleep all the forenoon, the 4th, 

320 


peck’s bad boy. 


3^1 


while other boys were celebrating, or did you scorch my 
cat?” and the grocery man looked at the boy as though he 
would believe every word he said, if he was bad. 

“ Well,” said the bad boy as he yawned as though he had 
been up all night, “ I am innocent of setting up with your 
cat, but I plead guilty to sitting up with Duffy. You see, I 



am bad, and it don’t make any difference where I am, and 
Durfy thumped me once when we were playing marbles, and 
I said I would get even with him some time. His Ma washes 
for us, and when she told me that her boy was sick with 
fever, and had nobody to stay with him while she was away, 
I thought it would be a good way to get even with Duffy, 
when he was weak, and I went down there to his shanty and 
gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and he 


21 


322 


PECK'S BAD BOV. 


cried ’cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that 
night I sat up with him while his Ma did the ironing, and 
Duffy was so glad that I went down every day and stayed 
there every night, and fired medicine down him, and let his 
Ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says I 
will be an angel when I die. Last night makes five nights I 
have sat up with him, and he has got so he can eat beef tea 
and crackers. My girl went back on me ’cause she said 
I was sitting up with some other girl. She said that Duffy 
story was too thin, but Duffy’s Ma was washing at my girl’s 
house and she proved what I said, and I was all right again. 
I slept all the forenoon the 4th, and then stayed with Duffy 
till four o’clock, and got a furlough and took my girl to the 
Soldiers’ Home. I had rather set up with Duffy, though.’^ 

“ O, get out. You can’t make me believe you had rathei 
stay in a sick room and set up with a boy, than to takt 
a girl to the 4th of July,” said the grocery man, as he took ^ 
brush and wiped the saw dust off some bottles of pepper- 
sauce that he was taking out of a box. “ You didn’t have 
any trouble with the girl, did you?” 

“ No, — not with her,” said the boy, as he looked into the 
little round zinc mirror to see if his eyebrows weie begining 
to grow. “ But her Pa is so unreasonable. 1 think a man 
ought to know better than to kick a boy right where he has 
had a pack of fire crackers explode in his pocket. You see, 
when I brought the girl back home, she was a wreck. Don’t 
you ever take a girl to the 4th of July. Take the advice of 
a boy who has had experience. We hadn’t more than got to 
the Soldiers’ Home grounds before some boys whg were 
playing tag grabbed hold of my girfs crushed-strawberry 
polonaise and ripped it off. That n^ade her mad, and she 
wanted me to take offense at it, and I tried to reason with 
the boys and they both jumped on me, and I see the only 
way to get out of it honorably, was to get out real spry, and 


peck’s bag boy. 


323 


1 got out. Then we sat down under a tree, to eat lunch, 
and my girl swallowed a pickle the wrong way, and I pounded 
her on the back, the way Ma does when I choke, and she 
yelled, and a policeman grabbed me and shook me, and 
asked me what I was hurting that poor girl for, and told me 
if I did it again he would arrest me! Everything went wrong. 
After dark somebody fired a Roman candle into my girl’s 
hat, and set it on fire, and I grabbed the hat and stamped on 
it, and spoiled the hair her Ma bought her. By gosh, I 
thought her hair was curly, but when the wig was off, her 
hair was as straight as could be. But she was purty, all the 
same. We got under another tree, to get away from the 
smell of burned hair, and a boy set off a nigger chaser, and it 
ran right at my girl’s feet, and burned her stockings, and a 
woman put the fire out for her, while I looked for the boy 
that fired the nigger chaser, but I didn’t want to find him. 
She was pretty near a wreck by that time, though she had 
all her dress left except the polonaise, and we went and sat 
under a tree in a quiet place, and I put my arm around her 
and told her never to mind the accidents, ’cause it would be 
dark when we got home, and just then a spark dropped 
down through the trees and fell in my pistol pocket, right 
next to her, where my bunch of fire crackers was, and they 
began to go off. Well, I never saw such a sight as she was. 
Her dress was one of these mosquito bar, cheese cloth dresses, 
and it burned just like punk. I had presence of mind enough 
to roll her on the grass and put out the fire, but in doing 
that I neglected my own conflagration, and when I got her 
put out, my coat tail and trousers were a total loss. My, 
but she looked like a goose that had been picked, and I 
looked like a fireman that fell through a hatchway. My girl 
wanted to go home, and I took her home, and her Pa was 
setting on the front steps, and he wouldn’t accept her, look- 
ing that way. He said he placed in my possession a whole 


3^4 


J>ECK^S BAD BOV. 




girl, clothed in her right mind, and I had brought back 
a burnt offering. He teaches in our Sunday school, and 
knows how to talk pious, but his boots are offul thick. 
I tried to explain that I was not responsible for the fire- 
works, and that he could bring in a bill against the govern- 
ment and I showed him how I was bereaved of a coat tail 
and some pants, but he wouldn’t reason at all, and when his 
foot hit me I thought it was the resurrection, sure, and 
when I got over the fence, and had picked myself up I 
never stopped till I got to Duffy’s and I set up with him, 
cause I thought her pa was after me, and I thought he 
wouldn’t enter a sick room and maul a watcher at the 
bedside of an invalid. But that settles it with me about 
celebrating. I don’t care if we did whip the British, after 
declaring independence, I don’t want my pants burnt off. 
What is the declaration of independence good for to a girl 
who loses her polonaise, and has her hair burnt off, and a 
nigger chaser burning her stockings? No, sir, they may 
talk about the glorious 4th of July, but will it bring back that 
blonde wig, or re-tail my coat? Hereafter I am a rebel, and 
I will go out in the woods the way Pa does, and come home 
with a black eye, got in a rational way.” 

“What, did your Pa get a black eye, tob? I hadn’t heard 
about that,” said the grocery man, giving the boy a handful 
of unbaked peanuts to draw him out. “ Didn’t get to fight- 
ing, did he?” 

“ No, Pa don’t fight. It is wrong, he says, to fight, unless 
you are sure you can whip the fellow, and Pa always gets 
whipped, so he quit fighting. You see, one of the deacons 
in our church lives out on a farm, and his folks were going 
away to spend the 4th, and he. had to do all the chores, so 
he invited Pa and Ma to come out to the farm and have a 
nice quiet time, and they went. There is nothing Pa likes 
better than to go out on a farm, and pretend he knows 


PECKS BAD BOY. 


325 


everything. When the farmer got Pa and Ma out there he 
set them to work, and Ma shelled peas while Pa went to dig 
potatoes for dinner. I think it was mean for the deacon to 
send Pa out in the corn field to dig potatoes, and set the 
dog on Pa, and tree him in an apple tree near the bee hives. 



and then go and visit 
with Ma and leave 
" Pa in the tree with 
^ the dog barking at him. Pa 

PA WENT TO DIG POTATOES FOR DINNER. 

said he never knew how mean a deacon could be, until he had 
sat on a limb of that apple tree all the afternoon. Abaut time 


32 ^ 


peck’s bad boy. 


to do chores the farmer came and found Pa, and called the dog 
off, and Pa came down, and then the farmer played the mean- 
est trick of all. He said city people didn’t know how to milk 
cows, and Pa said he wished he had as many dollars as he knew 
how to milk cows. He said his spechulty was milking kick- 
ing cows, and the farmer gave Pa a tin pail and a milking stool 
and let down the bars, and pointed out to Pa ‘the worst cow 
on the place.’ Pa knew his reputation was at stake, and he 
went up to the cow and punchard it in the flank and said, 
“hist, confound you.” Well, the cow wasn’t a histing cow, 
but a histing bull, and Pa knew it was a bull as quick as 
he see it put down its head and beller, and Pa dropped 
the pail and stool, and started for the bars, and the 
bull after Pa. I don’t think it was right in Ma to bet two 
shillings with the farmer that Pa would get to the bars be- 
fore the bull did, though she won the bet. Pa said he knew 
it was a bull just as soon as the horns got tangled up in his 
coat tail, and when he struck on the other side of the bars, 
and his nose hit the ash barrel where they make lye for soap. 
Pa said he saw ihore fireworks than we did at the Soldiers’ 
Home. Pa wouldn’t celebrate any more, and he came home 
after thanking the farmer for his courtesies, but he wants me 
tojborrow a gun and go out with him hunting. We are going 
to shoot a bull and a dog and some bees, maybe,we will shoot 
the farmer, if Pa keeps on as mad as he is now. Well, we 
won’t have another 4th of July for a year, and may be by 
that time my girl’s polonaise and hair will grow out, and 
that bull may be':ome gentle so Pa can milk it. Ta-ta." 


CHAPTlSx^ XXI. 


WORKING ON SUNDAY. 

Turning a grindstone is healthy— “Not any grindstone for Hennery!”— 
This hypocrisy is played out — Another job on the old man— How 
the days of the week got mixed — The numerous funerals — The 
minister appears — The bad boy goes over the back fence. 

“Hello,” said the grocery man to the bad boy as he came 
in looking sick at heart, and all broke ‘up. “How is your 
muscle this morning?” 

“All right enough,” said the boy with a look of inquiry, 
as though wondering what was coming next. “Why?” 

“O, nothing, only I was going to grind the hatchet, and 
some knives and things, this morning, and I thought maybe 
you would like to go out in the shed and turn the grindstone 
for me to develop your muscles. Turning the grindstone 
is the healthiest thing a boy can do.” 

“That is all right enough,” said the bad boy, as he took 
up a sweet cracker, “but please take a good look at me. Do 
I look like a grindstone boy? Do I resemble a good little 
boy that can’t say ‘no,’ and goes off and turns a grindstone 
half a day for some old duffer, who pays him by giving him 
a handful of green currants, or telling him he will be a man 
some day, and the boy goes off one way, with a lame back, 
while the good man goes the other way with a sharp scythe, 
and a chuckle at the softness of the boy? . You are mistaken 
in me. I have passed the grindstone period, and you will 
have to pick up another sardine who has never done circular 
work. Not any grindstone for Hennery, if you please.” 
“You are getting too smart,” said the grocery man, as he 

827 


328 


peck’s bad boy. 


charged a pound of sweet crackers to the boy’s father. “You 
don’t have to turn the grindstone if you don’t want to.” 

“That’s what I thought,” says the boy as he takes a hand- 
ful of blueberries. “You grindstone sharps, who are always 
laying for a fool boy to give taffy to, and get him to break 
his back, don’t play it fine enough. You bear too hard on 
the grindstone. I have 
seen the time when a man 
could get me to turn the 
grindstone for him till the 



THEY MAKE A BOY BELIEVE HE IS BIGGER THAN GRANT. 


COWS come home, by making me believe it was fun, and by 
telling me he never saw a boy that seemed to throw so much 
soul into turning a grindstone as I did, but I have found that 
such men are hypocrites. They inveigle a boy into their nest, 
like the spider does the fly, and at first they don’t bear on hard, 
but just let the blade of the axe or the scythe touch the grind- 
stone, and they make a boy believe he is a bigger man than 
old Grant. They bet him he will get tired, and he bets that 


peck’s bad boy. 


329 


he can turn a grindstone as long as anybody, and when the 
boy has got his reputation at stake, then they begin to bear 
on hard, and the boy gets tired but he holds out, and when 
the tools are ground he says he is as fresh as a daisy, when 
he is tired enough to die. Such men do more to teach boys 
the hollowness of the world, and its tricky features, than 
anything, and they teach boys to know who are friends and 
who are foes. No, sir, the best way is to hire a grown person 
to turn your grindstone. I remember I turned a grindstone 
four hours for a farmer once, and when I got through he said 
I could go to the spring and drink all the water I wanted for 
nothing. He was the tightest man I ever saw. Why, tight! 
That man was tight enough to hold kerosene.” 

“That’s all right. Who wanted you to turn the grind- 
stone, anyway? But what is it about your Pa and Ma be- 
ing turned out of church? I hear they scandalized them- 
selves horribly last Sunday.” 

“Well, you see, me and my chum put up a job on Pa to 
make him think Sunday was only Saturday and Ma she fell 
into it, and I guess we are all going to get fired from the 
church for working on Sunday. You see they didn’t go to 
meetin’ last Sunday because Ma’s new bonnet hadn't come, 
and Monday and Tuesday it rained and the rest of the week 
was so muddy no one called, or they could not get any- 
where, so Monday I slid out early and got the daily paper, 
and on Tuesday my chum he got the paper off the steps and 
put Monday’s paper in its place. I watched when they 
were reading it, but they did not notice the date. Then 
Wednesday we put Tuesday’s paper on the steps and Pa 
said it seemed more than Tuesday, but Ma she got the 
paper of the day before and looked at the date and said it 
seemed so to her but she guessed they had lost a day some- 
how. Thursday we got Wednesday’s paper on the steps, 
and Friday we rung in Thursday’s paper, and Saturday my 


330 


peck’s bad boy. 


chum he got Friday’s paper on the steps, and Ma said she 
guessed she would wash to-morrow, and Pa said he believed 
he would hoe in the garden and get the weeds out so it would 
look better to folks when they went by Sunday to church. 
Well, Sunday morning came, and with it Saturday’s daily 
paper, and Pa barely glanced it over as he got on his overalls 



IT wasn’t long before folks began going to church. 


and went out in his shirt sleeves a hoeing in the front garden; 
and I and my chum helped M a carry water to wash. She 
said it seemed the longest week she ever saw, but when we 


peck’s bad boy. 


331 


brought the water, and took a plate of pickles to the hired 
girl that was down with the mumps, we got in the lilac bushes 
and waited for the curtain to rise. It wasn’t long before 
folks began going to church and you’d a dide laughing to 
see them all stop in front of where Ma was washing and look 
at her, and then go on to where Pa was hoeing weeds and 
stop and look at him and then drive on. After about a 
dozen teams had passed I heard Ma ask Pa if he knew who 
was dead, as there must be a funeral somewhere. Pa had 
just hoed into a bumble-bee’s nest and said he did not know 
of any that was dead, but knew some that ought to be, and 
Ma she did not ask any foolish questions any more. After 
about twenty teams had stopped, Ma she got nervous and 
asked Deacon Smith if he saw anything green; he said some- 
thing about desecration, and drove away. Deacon Brown 
asked Pa if he did not think he was setting a bad example 
before his boy; but Pa, he said he thought it would be a 
good one if the boy could only be hired to do it. Finally 
Ma got mad and took the tub behind the house where they 
could not see her. About four o’clock that afternoon we 
saw a dozen of our congregation headed by the minister, file 
into our yard, and my chum and I knew it was time to fly, 
so we got on the back steps where we could hear. Pa met 
them at the door, expecting some bad news; and when they 
were seated, Ma she came in and remarked that it was a very 
unhealthy year, and it stood people in hand to meet their 
latter end. None of them said a word until the elder put on 
his specs, and said it was a solemn occasion, and Ma she 
turned pale, and wondered who it could be, and Pa says 
‘don’t keep us in suspense, who is dead?’ and the elder said 
no one was dead; but they called as a duty they owed the 
cause to take action on them for working on Sunday. Ma, 
she fainted away, and they threw a pitcher of water down 
her back, and Pa said he guessed they were a pack of luna- 


332 


peck’s bad boy. 


tics, but they all swore it was Sunday, and they saw Ma 
washing and Pa out hoeing, as they went to church, and they 
had called to take action on them. Then there was a few 
minutes low conversation I could not catch, and then we 
heard Pa kick his chair over and say it was more tricks of 
that darned boy. Then we knew it was time to adjourn, and 
I was just getting through the back fence as Pa reached me 
with a barrel stave, and that’s what makes me limp some!” 

“ That was real mean in you boys,” said the grocery man. 
“It will be hard for your Pa and Ma to explain that matter. 
Just think how bad they must feel.” 

“ O, I don’t know. I remember hearing Pa and Uncle Ezra 
tell how they fooled their father once, and got him to go to 
mill with a grist, on Sunday, and Pa said he would defy any- 
body to fool him on the day of the week. I don’t think a 
man ought to tempt his little boy by defying him to fool 
his father. Well, I’ll take a glass of your fifty cent cider 
and go,” and soon the grocery man looked out of the 
window and found somebody had added a cipher to the 
‘Sweet cider, only five cents a glass,’ making it an expensive 
drink, considering it was made of sour apples. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


THE OLD MAN AWFULLY BLOATED. 

The old man begins drinking again — Thinks betting is harmless— Had 
•to walk home from Chicago — The spectacles changed — A small 
suit of clothes— The old man awfully bloated — “Hennery your Pa 
is a mighty sick man ” — The swelling suddenly goes down. 

“Come in,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the 
youth stood on the steps in an uncertain sort of a way, as 
though he did not know whether he would be welcome or 
not. “ I tell you, boy, I pity you. I understand your Pa 
has got to drinking again. It is too bad. I can’t think of 
anything that humiliates a boy, and makes him so ashamed, 
as to have a father that is in the habit of hoisting in too much 
benzine. A buy feels as though everybody was down on him, 
and I don’t wonder that such boys often turn out bad. 
What started your Pa to drinking again?” 

“ O, Ma thinks it was losing money on the Chicago races. 
You see. Pa is great on pointers. He don’t usually bet un- 
less he has got a sure thing, but when he gets what they call 
a pointer, that is, somebody tells him a certain horse is sure 
to win, because the other horses are to be pulled back, he 
thinks a job has been put up, and if he thinks he is on the 
inside of the ring he will bet. He says it does not do any 
hurt to bet, if you win, and he argues that a man who wins 
lots of money can do a great deal of good with it. But he 
had to walk home from the Chicago races all the same, and 
he has been steaming ever since. Pa can’t stand adversity. 
But I guess we have got him all right now. He is the 

S33 


334 


t>ECK*S BAD BOY. 


scartest man you ever saw,” and the boy took a can opener 
and began to cut the zinc under the stove, just to see if it 
would work as well on zinc as on tin. 

“What, you haven’t been dissecting him again, have 
you?” said the grocery man, as he pulled a stool up beside 
the boy to hear the news. “ How did you bring him to his 
senses?” 

“ Well, Ma tried having the minister talk to Pa, but Pa 
talked Bible, about taking a little wine for the stomach’s 
sake, and gave illustrations about Noah getting full, so the 
minister couldn’t brace him up, and then Ma had some of 
the sisters come and talk to him, but he broke them all up 
by talking about what an appetite they had for champagne 
punch when they were out in camp last summer, and they 
couldn’t have any effect on him, and so Ma said she guessed 
I would have to exercise my ingenuity on Pa again. Ma has 
an idea that I have got some sense yet, so I told her that if she 
would do just as I said, me and my chum would scare Pa so 
he would swear off. She said she would, and we went to 
work. First, I took Pa’s' spectacles down to an optician, 
Saturday night, and had the glasses taken out and a pair put 
in their place that would magnify, and I took them home 
and put them in Pa’s spectacle case. Then I got a suit of 
clothes from my chum’s uncle’s trunk, about half the size of 
Pa’s clothes. My chum’s uncle is a very small man, and Pa 
is corpulent. I got a plug hat three sizes smaller than Pa’s 
hat, and the name out of Pa’s hat and put it in the small hat. 
I got a shirt about half big enough for Pa, and put his ini- 
tials on the thing under the bosom, and got a number four- 
teen collar. Pa wears seventeen. Pa had promised to brace 
up and go to church Sunday morning, and Ma put these 
small clothes where Pa could put them on. I told Ma, 
when Pa woke up, to tell him he looked awfully bloated, 
and excite his curiosity, and then send for me.” 


peck’s bad boy. 


335 


“You didn’t play such a trick as that on a poor old man, 
did you?” said the grocery man, as a smile came over his 
face. 

“ You bet. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. 
Well, Ma told Pa he looked awfully bloated, and that his 
dissipation was killing him, as well as all the rest 



of the family. Pa said he guessed he wasn’t bloated 
very much, but he got up and put on his 
spectacles and looked at himself in the glass. 
You’d a dide to see him look at himself. ' His 
face looked as big as two faces, through the glass, and 
his nose was a sight. Pa looked scared, and then he held up 
his hand and looked at that. His hand looked like a ham. 
Just then I came in, and I turned pale, with some chalk on 
my face, and I begun to cry, and I said, ‘ O, Pa, what ails 
you? You are so swelled up I hardly knew you.’ Pa looked 
sick to his stomach, and then he tried to get on his pants. 
O, my, it was all I could do to keep from laughing to see him 


336 


peck’s bad boy. 


pull them pants on. He could just get his legs in, and when 
I got a shoe horn and gave it to him, he was mad. He said 
it was a mean boy that would give his Pa a shoe horn to put 
on his pants with. The pants wouldn’t come around Pa into 
ten inches, and Pa said he must have eat something that dis- 
agreed with him, and he laid it to watermelon. Ma stuffed 
her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from laffing, when 
she see Pa look at hisself. The legs of the pants were so 
tight Pa could hardly breathe, and he turned pale, and said: 
‘Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man,’ and then Ma and 
me both laughed, and he said we wanted him to die so we 
could spend his life insurance in riotous living. But when 
Pa put on the condensed shirt, Ma she laid down on the 
lounge and fairly yelled, and I laughed till my side ached. 
Pa got it over his head, and got his hands in the sleeves, and 
couldn’t get it either way, and he couldn’t see us laugh, but 
he could hear us, and he said; ‘It’s darned funny, ain’t it, to 
have a parent swelled up this way. If I bust you will both 
be sorry.’ Well, Ma took hold of one side of the shirt, and 
I took hold of the other, and we pulled it on, and whea Pa’s 
head came up through the collar, his face was blue. Ma told 
him she was afraid he would have a stroke of apoplexy be- 
fore he got his clothes on, and I guess Pa thought so too. 
He tried to get the collar on, but it wouldn’t go half way 
around his neck, and he looked in the glass and cried, he 
looked so. He sat down in a chair and panted he was so 
out of breath, and the shirt and pants ripped, and Pa said 
there was no use living if he was going to be a rival to a fat 
woman in the side show. Just then I put the plug hat on 
Pa’s head, and it was so small it was going to roll off, when 
Pa tried to fit it on his head, and then he took it off and 
looked inside of it to see if it was his hat, and when he found 
his name in it, he said ‘Take it away. My head is all wrong 
too.’ Then he told me to go for the doctor, mighty quick. 


PECK^S BAD BOY. 


33; 


I got the doctor and told him what we were tryng to do with 
Pa, and he said he would finish the job. So the Doc. came 
in, and Pa was on the lounge, and when the Doc. saw him, 
he said it was lucky he was called just as he was or we 
would have required an undertaker. He put some pounded 
ice on Pa’s head the first thing, ordered the shirt cut open, 
and we got the pants off. Then he gave Pa an emetic, and 
had his feet soaked, and Pa said, ‘Doc., if you will bring me 



TAKE IT away! MY HEAD IS ALL WRONG TOO. 


out of this I will never drink another drop.’ The Doc. told Pa 
that his life was not worth a button if he ever drank again, 
and left about half a pint of sugar pills to be fired into Pa 
every five minutes. Ma and me sat up with Pa all day Sun- 
day, and Monday morning I changed the spectacles, and 
took the clothes home and along about noon Pa said he felt 
as though he could get up. Well, you never see a tickleder 
man than he was when he found the swelling had gone down 
so he could get his pants and shirt on, and he says that 
22 



J38 


peck’s bad boy. 


doctor is the best in this town. Ma says I am a smart boy, 
and Pa has taken the pledge, and we are all right. Say, you 
don’t think there is anything wrong in a boy playing it on 
his Pa once in a while, do you?” 

“Not much. You have very likely saved your Pas life. 
No, sir, joking is all right when by so doing you can break a 
person of a bad habit,” and the grocery man cut a chew of 
tobacco off a piece of plug that was on the counter, which 
the boy had soaked in kerosene, and before he had fairly 
got it rolled in his cheek, he spit it out and began to gag, 
and as the boy started leisurely out the door, the grocery 
man said, “ Look-a-here, condemn you, don’t you ever tamper 
with my tobacco again, or, by thunder. I’ll maul you,” and 
he followed the boy to the door, spitting cotton all the way; 
and, as the boy went around the corner, the grocery man 
thought how different a joke seemed when it was on some- 
body else. And then he turned to go in and rinse the ker- 
osene out of his mouth, and found a sign on a box of new 
green apples, as follows: 


COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM 
YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY 
AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE. 


i 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


uhosts don’t steal wormy figs — A grand rehearsal — The minister mur- 
ders Hamlet — The watermelon knife — The old man wanted to re- 
hearse the drunken scene in Rip Van Winkle — No hugging allowed 


— Hamlet wouldn’t have two 
an idiot.” 



AM THY father’s GHOST.” 

his mask and rolled up 


ghosts — “How would you like to be 

“I am thy father’s ghost,” 
said a sheeted form in the door- 
way of the grocery, one even- 
ing, and the grocery man got 
behind the cheese box, while 
the ghost continued in a sep- 
ulchral voice “doomed for a cer- 
tain time to walk the night,” 
and, waving a chair round, the 
ghost strode up to the grocery 
man, and with the other ghostly 
hand reached into a box of 
figs. 

“No, you ain’t no ghost,’ 
said the grocery man, recogniz- 
ing the bad boy. “Ghosts do 
not go prowling around gro- 
ceries stealing wormy figs. 
What do you mean by this sin- 
ful masquerade business? My 
father never had no ghost 1” 

“O, we have struck it now,” 
said the bad boy as he pulled 
the sheet he had worn around 


34C) peck's bad boy. 

him. *We are going to have amateur theatricals, to raise 
money to have the church carpeted, and I am going to boss 
the job.” 

“You don’t say,” answered the grocery man as he thought 
how much he could sell to the church people for a straw- 
berry and ice cream festival, and how little he could sell for 
amateur theatricals. “Who is going into it, and what are you 
going to play?” 

“Pa and Ma, and me, and the minister, and three choir 
singers, and my chum, and the minister’s wife, and two dea- 
cons, and an old maid are rehearsing, but we have not decided 
what to play yet. They all want to play a different play, 
and I am fixing it so they can all be satisfied. The minister 
wants to play Hamlet, Pa wants to play Rip Van Winkle, 
Ma wants to play Mary Anderson, the old maid wants to 
play a boarding-school play, and the choir singers want an 
opera, and the minister’s wife wants to play Lady Macbeth, 
and my chum and me want to play a double song and dance, 
and I am going to give them all a show. We had a rehersal 
last night, and I am the only one able to be around to-day. 
You see they have all been studying different plays, and 
they all wanted to talk at once. We let the minister sail in 
first. He had on a pair of his wife’s black stockings, and a 
mantle made of a linen buggy-lap blanket, and he wore a 
mason’s cheese knife such as these fellows with poke bon- 
nets and white feathers wear when they get an invitation to 
a funeral or an excursion. Well, you never saw Hamlet 
murdered the way he did it. His interpretation of the char- 
acter was that Hamlet was a dude that talked through his 
nose, and while he was repeating Hamlet’s soliloquy. Pa, 
who had come in with an old hunting suit on, as Rip Van 
Winkle, went to sleep, and he didn’t wake up till Lady Mac- 
beth came in, in the sleep-walking scene. She couldn’t find 
a knife, so I took a slice of watermelon and sharpened it 


peck’s bad boy. 


341 


for her, and she made a mistake in the one she was to stab, 
and she stabbed Hamlet in the neck with a slice of water- 
melon, and the core of the melon fell on Pa’s face, as he lay 
asleep as Rip, and when Lady Macbeth said, ‘Out damned 
s[ ot,’ Pa woke up and felt the gob of watermelon on his 

face, and he 
thought he had 
been murd e red, 
and Ma came in on 
a hop, skip and 
jump as ‘Parthe- 
nia,’ and threw her 
arms around a dea- 
con who was going 
to play the grave 
digger, and began 
to call him pet 
names, and Pa was 
mad, and the choir 
singers they began 
to sing, ‘In the 
North Sea lived a 
whale,’ and then 
they quit acting. 
You’d a dide to 
see Hamlet. The 
piece of watermel- 

MA SAID A LITTLE OF THAT WOULD GO A On Went down his 

GOOD WAYS. neck, and Lady 

Macbeth went off and left it in the wound under his 
collar, and Ma had to pull it out, and Hamlet said the 
seeds and the juice was running down inside his shirt, and 
he said he wouldn’t play if he was going to be stabbed with 
a slice of melon, so while his wife was getting the melon 



342 


peck's bad boy. 


seeds out of his neck, and drying the juice on his shirt, I • 
sharpened a cucumber for Lady Macbeth to use as a dag- 
ger, but Hamlet kicked on cucumbers, too, and I had more 
trouble than any stage manager ever had. Then Pa wanted 
to rehearse the drunken scene in Rip Van Winkle, where he 
hugs Gretchen and drinks out of a flask behind her back, 
and he got one of the choir singers to act as Gretchen, and 
I guess he would have been hugging till this time, and have 
swallowed the flask, if Ma had not taken him by the ear and 
said, a little of that would go a good ways in an entertain- 
ment for the church. Pa said he didn’t know as it was any 
worse than her prancing up to a grave digger and hugging 
him till the filling came out of his teeth, and then the min- 
ister decided that we wouldn’t have any hugging at all in 
the play, and the choir girls said they wouldn’t play, and the 
old maids struck, and the play came to a stand-still.” 

“ Well, that beats anything I ever heard tell of. It’s a 
shame fpr people outside the profession to do play acting, , 
and I won’t goto the entertainment unless I get a pass,” said 
the grocery man. “ Did you rehearse any more?” 

“Yes, the minister wanted to try the ghost scene,” said 
the boy, “ and he wanted me to be the ghost. Well, they 
have two ‘ Markses’ and two ‘Topsies’ in Uncle Tom’s cabin, 
and I thought two ghosts in Hamlet would about fill the bill 
for amateurs, so I got my chum to act as one ghost. We 
broke them all up. I wanted to have something new in ghosts, 
so my chum and me got two pair of Ma’slong stockings, one 
pair red and one pair blue, and I put on a red one and a blue 
one, and my chum did the same. Then we got some ruffled 
clothes belonging to Ma, with flounces and things on, and 
put them on so they came most down to our knees, and we 
put sheets over us, clear to our feet, and when Hamlet got 
to yearning for his father’s ghost, I came in out of the bath 
room with the sheet over me, and said I was the huckle- 


peck’s bad boy. 


343 


berry he was looking for, and my chum followed me out 
and said he v/as a twin ghost, also, and then Hamlet got on 
his ear and said he wouldn’t play with two ghosts, and he 
v/ent off pouting, and then my chum and me pulled off the 
sheets and danced a clog dance. Well, when the rest of 
the troop saw our make-up, it nearly killed them. Most of 
them had seen ballet dancers, but they never saw them with 
different colored socks. The minister said the benefit was 
rapidly becoming a farce, and before we had danced half a 
minute Ma recognized her socks, and she came for me with 
a hot box, and made me take them off, and Pa was mad and 
said the dancing was the only thing that was worth the price 
ot admission, and he scolded Ma, and the choir girls sided 
with Pa, and just then my chum caught his toe in the carpet 
and fell down, and that loosened the plaster overhead and 
about a bushel fell on the crowd. Pa thought lightning had 
struck the house, the minister thought it was a judgment on 
them all for play acting, and he began to shed his Hamlet 
costume with one hand and pick the plaster out of his hair 
with the other. The women screamed and tried to get the 
plaster out of their necks, and while Pa was brushing off the 
choir singers Ma said the rehearsal was adjourned, and they 
all went home, but we are going to rehearse again on Friday 
night. The play cannot be considered a success, but we 
will bring it out all right by the time the entertainment is to 
come off.” 

“ By gum,” said the grocery man, ” I would like to have 
seen that minister as Hamlet. Didn’t he look funny?” 

“Funny! Well, I should remark. He seemed to predomi- 
nate. That is, he was too fresh, too numerous, as it were. 
But at the next rehearsal I am going to work in an act from 
Richard the Third, and my chum is going to play the China- 
man of the Danites, and I guess we will take the cake. Say, 
I want to work in an idiot somewhere. How would you like 


344 


peck’s bad boy. 


to play the idiot? You wouldn’t have to rehearse or afcy- 
thing— ” 

At this point the bad boy was seen to go out of the gro- 
cery store real spry, followed by a box of wooden clothes- 
pins, that the grocery man had thrown after him. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 


THE CRUEL WOMAN AND THE LUCKLESS DOG. 

The bad boy with a dog and a black eye — Where did you steal him? 
Angels don’t break dog’s legs — A woman who breaks dog’s legs has 
no show with St. Peter — Another burglar scare — The grocery de- 
livery man scared. 

“Hello!” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as e 
came in with a black eye, leading a hungry looking dog that 
was walking on three legs, and had one leg tied up with a 
red silk handkerchief. “What is this — a part of your ama- 
teur theater? Now you get out of here with that dog 
mighty quick. A boy that hurts dogs so they have to have 
their legs tied up, is no friend of mine,” and the grocery 
man took up a broom to drive the dog out doors. 

“There, you calm yourself,” says the boy to the grocery 
man, as the dog got behind the boy and looked up at the 
grocery man as though he was not afraid as long as the bad 
boy was around. “Set up the crackers and cheese, sausage, 
and pickles, and everything this dog wants to eat — he is a 
friend of mine — that dog is my guest, and those are my 
splints on his broken leg, and that is my handkerchief that 
my girl gave me, wound around it, and you touch that dog 
except in the way of kindness, and down comes your house.” 
And the boy doubled up his fists as though he meant busi- 
ness. 

“Poor doggie,” said the grocery man, as he cutoff a piece 
of sausage and offered it to the dog, which was declined 
with thanks, expressed by the wagging tail. “Where did 
you steal him?” 


845 


346 


peck’s bad boy. 


“I didn’t steal him, and he is no cannibal. He won’t eat 
your sausage!” and the boy put up his elbow as though to 
ward off an imaginary blow. “You see, this dog was follow- 
ing* a pet dog that belonged to a woman, and she tried 
to shoo him away, but he wouldn’t shoo. This dog did not 
know that he was a low born, miserable dog, and had no right 
to move in the society of an aristocratic pet dog, and he fol- 
lowed right along. He thought this was a free country, and 
one dog was as good as another, and he followed that woman 
and her pet dog right into her door yard. The pet dog en- 
couraged this dog, and he went in the yard, and when the 
woman got up on the steps she threw a velocipede at this 
dog and broke his leg, and then she took up her pet and 
went in the house so she wouldn’t hear this dog howl. She . 
is a nice woman, and I see her go to meeting every Sunday 
with a lot cf morocco books in her hands, and once I pumped 
the organ in the church where she goes, and she was so 
pious I thought she was an angel — but angels don’t break 
dog’s legs. I’ll bet when she goes up to the gate and sees 
St. Peter open the book and look for the charges against her 
she will tremble as though she had fits. And when St 
Peter runs his finger down the ledger, and stops at the dog 
column, and turns and looks at her over his spectacles, and 
says, “Madam, how about your stabbing a poor dog with a 
velocipede, and breaking its leg?” she will claim it was an 
accident; but she can’t fool Pete. He is on to everybody’s 
racket, and if they get in there, they have got to have a clean 
record.” 

“Say, look-a-here,” said the grocery man, as he looked at 
the boy in astonishment as he unwound the handkerchief 
to dress the dog’s broken leg, while the dog looked up in the 
boy’s face with an expression of thankfulness and confidence 
that he was an able practitioner in dog bone-setting, “ what 
kind of talk is that? You talk of heaven as though its 


peck’s bad boy. 


347 


books were kept like the books of a grocery, and you speak 
too familiarly of St. Peter.” 

“Well, I didn’t mean any disrespect,” said the boy, as he 
fixed the splint on the dog’s leg, and tied it with a string, 
while the dog licked his hand,” but I learned in Sunday 

school that up there 


they watch even the 
sparrow’s fall, and they 
wouldn’t be apt to get 
left on a dog bigger 
than a whole flock 
of sparrows, ’speci' 



“SAY, LOOK-A-HERE,” SAID THE GROCERYMAN. 

ally when the dog’s fall was accompanied with such noise 
as a velocipede makes when it falls down stairs. No sir, a 
woman who throws a velocipede at a poor, homeless dog, 
and breaks its leg, may carry a car load of prayer books, 
and she may attend to all the sociables, but according to 
what I have been told, if she goes sailing up to the gate of 
New Jerusalem, as though she owned the whole place and 



348 


peck's bad boy. 


expects to be ushered into a private box, she will get left 
The man in the box office will tell her she is not on the list, 
and that there is a variety show below, where the devil 
is a star, and fallen angels are dancing the cancan with 
sheet iron tights, on brimstone lakes and she can probably 
crawl under the canvass but she can’t get in among the 
angelic hosts until she can satisfactorily explain that 
dog story that is told of her. Possibly I have got a raw 
way of expressing myself, but I had rather take my chances, 
if I should apply for admission up there, with this lame dog 
under my arm than to take hers with a pug dog that 
hain’t got any legs broke. A lame dog and a clear con- 
science beats a pet dog, when your conscience feels nervous. 
Now I am going to lay this dog in a barrel of dried apples, 
where your cat sleeps, and give him a little rest, and I will 
give you four minutes to tell me all you know, and you will 
have three minutes on your hands with nothing to say. Un- 
button your lip and give your teeth a vacation.” 

“Well, you have got gall. However, I don’t know but 
you are right about that woman that hurt the dog. Still, it 
may have been her way of petting a strange dog. We should 
try to look upon the charitable side of people’s eccentricities. 
But say, I want to ask you if you have seen anything of my 
man that delivers groceries. Saturday night I sent him 
over to your house to deliver some things, about ten o’clock 
and he has not showed up since. What do you think has* 
become of him? ” 

“Well, by gum, that accounts for it. Saturday night, 
about ten o’clock we heard somebody in the back yard, 
around the kitchen door, just as we were going to bed, and 
Pa was afraid it was a burglar after the church money he 
had collected last Sunday. He ha-d got to turn it over the 
next day, to pay the minister’s expenses on his vacation, 
and it made him nervous to have it around. I peeked out 


t£CK*S BAD BOY. 


349 



of the window and saw the man, and I told Pa, and Pa got 
a revolver and began shooting through the wire screen to 
the kitchen window, and I saw the man drop the basket and 

begin to climb 
over the fence real 
sudden, and I went 
out and began to 
groan, as though 
somebody was dy- 
ing in the alley, 
and I brought in 
the basket with the 
mackerel and 
green corn, and 
told Pa that from 
tlie groaning out 
there I guess he 
had killed the gro- 
cery deliveryman, 
and I wanted Pa 
ot go out and help 
me hunt for the 
body, but he said 
he was going- to 
take the midnight 
train and go out 
west on some bus- 
iness, and Pa lit 
out. I guess your 
man was scared 
and went one way 
and Pa was scared and went the other. Won’t they be 
astonished when they meet each other on the other side of 
the world? Pa will shoot him again when they meet, if he 


THE MAN BEGAN TO CLIMB. 


350 


peck’s bad boy. 


gives Pa any sass. Pa says when he gets mad he had just as 
soon eat as to kill a man.” 

“Well, I guess my man has gone off to a Sunday pic-nic 
or something, and will come back when he gets sober, but 
how are your theatricals getting along?” asked the gro- 
cery man. 

“ O, that scheme is all busted,” said the boy. “ At least 
until the minister gets back from his vacation. The con- 
gregation has noticed a red spot on his hand for some time, 
and the ladies said what he needed was rest. They said if 
that spot was allowed to go on it might develop into a pim- 
ple, and the minister might die of blood poison, super- 
induced by overwol-k, and they took up a collection, and he 
has gone. The night they bid him good-bye, the spot on 
his hand was the subject of much comment. The women 
sighed and said it was lucky they noticed the spot on his 
hand before it had sapped his young life* away. Pa said 
Job had more than four hundred boils worse than that, and 
he never took a vacation, and then Ma dried Pa up. She 
told Pa he had never suffered from blood poison, and Pa 
said he could raise cat boils for the market and never 
squeal. Ma see the only way to shut Pa up was to let 
him go home with the choir singer. So she bounced him 
off with her, and he didn’t get home till most ’leven o’clock, 
but Ma she set up for him. Maybe what she said to Pa 
made him go West after peppering your burglar. Well, 1 
must go home now, ’cause I run the family since Pa lit out. 
Say, send some of your most expensive canned fruits and 
things over to the house. Darn the expense.” And the 
bad boy took the lame dog under his arm and walked out. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL. 

Why is lettuce like a girl? — King Solomon a fool — Think of any sane 
man having a thousand wives — He would have to have two hotels 
during vacation— 300 blondes — 600 brunettes, etc — A thousand 
wives taking ice cream — I don’t envy Solomon his thousand. 

“What you sitting there like a bump on a log for?” 
asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the youth had sat 
on a box for half-an-hour, with his hands in his pockets, 
looking at a hole in the floor, until his eyes were set like a 
dying horse. What you thinking of, anyway? It seems to 
me boys set around and think more than they used to when 
I was a boy,” and the grocery man brushed the wilted let- 
tuce and shook it, and tried to make it stand up stiff and 
crisp, before he put it out doors; but the contrary lettuce 
which had been picked the day before, looked so tired that 
the boy noticed it. 

“That lettuce reminds me of a girl. Yesterday I was in 
here when it was new, like the girl going to the picnic, and 
it was as fresh and pYoud, and starched up, and kitteny, and 
full of life, and sassy as a girl starting out for a picnic. To- 
day it has got back from the picnic, and, like the girl, the 
starch is all taken out, and it is limber, and languid, and 
tired, and can’t stand up alone, and it looks as though it 
wanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the 
alley, rather than be set out in front of a store to be sold to 
honest people, and give them the gangrene of the liver.” and 
the boy put on a health commissioner air that frightened 

851 


■0 




35 ^ 


peck’s bad BOV. 



“THAT LETTUCE REMINDS ME 
OF A GIRL.” 


the grocery man, and he threw 
the lettuce out the back door. 

‘You never mind about my 
lettuce,” said the grocery man, 
“ I can attend to my affairs. But 
now tell me what you were 
thinking about here all tne 
morning?” 

“I was thinking what a fool 
King Solomon was,” said the 
boy, with the air of one who has 
made a statement that has got 
to be argued pretty strong to 
make it hold water. 

“ Now, look-a-here,” said 
the grocery man in anger, “ 1 
have stood it to have you play 
tricks on me, and have listened 
to your condemned foolishhess 
without a murmur as long as 
you have confined yourself to 
people now living, but when 
you attack Solomon — the wisest 
man, the great king— and call 
him a fool, friendship ceases, 
and you must get out of this 
store. Solomon in all his glory, 
is a friend of mine, and no fool 
boy is going to abuse him in my 
presence. Now, you dry up!” 

“ Sit down on the ice box,” 
said the boy to the grocery 
man, “what you need is rest. 
You are overworked. Your 





t»ECK S BAD BOV. 


353 


alleged brain is equal to wilted lettuce, and it can devise 
ways and means to hide rotten peaches under good ones, so 
as to sell them to blind orphans; but when it comes to grasp- 
ing great questions, your small brain cannot comprehend 
them. Your brain may go up sideways to a great question 
and rub against it, but it cannot surround it, and grasp it. 
That’s where you are deformed. Now, it is different with 
me. I can raise brain to sell to you grocery men. Listen. 
This Solomon is credited with being the wisest man, and yet 
history says he had a thousand wives. Just think of it. 
You have got one wife, and Pa has got one, and all the 
neighbors have one, if they have had any kind of luck. 
Does not one wife make you pay attention? Wouldn’t two 
wives break you up? Wouldn’t three cause you to see stars? 
How would ten strike you? Why, man alive, you do not 
grasp the magnitude of the statement that Solomon had a 
thousand wives, A thousand wives, standing side by side, 
would reach about four blocks. Marching by fours it would 
take them twenty minutes to pass a given point. The largest 
summer resort hotel pnly holds about five hundred people, 
so Sol would have had to hire two hotels if he took his wives 
out for a day in the country. If you would stop and think 
once in a while you would know more.” 

The grocery man’s eyes had begun to stick out as the 
bad boy continued, as though the statistics had never been 
brought to his attention before, but he was bound to stand 
by his old friend Solomon, and he said, “Well, Solomon’s 
wives must have been different from our wives of the present 
day.” 

“ Not much,” said the boy, as he saw he was paralyzing 
the grocery man. “Women have been about the same ever 
since Eve. She got mashed on the old original du<;ie, and it 
stands to reason that Solomon’s wives were no better than 
the mother of the human race. Statistics show that one 


28 


3S4 


PECK'S BAD BOY. 


woman out of every ten is red headed. That would give 
Solomon an even hundred red headed wives. Just that hun- 
dred red headed wives would be enough to make an ordinary 
man think that there is a land that is fairer than this. Then 
there would be, out of the other nine hundred, about three 
hundred blondes, and the other six hundred would be bru- 
nettes, and maybe he had a few albinos, and bearded women, 
and fat women, and dwarfs. Now, those thousand women 
had appetites, desires for dress and style, the same as all 
women. Imagine Solomon saying to them: ‘Girls, lets all 
go down to the ice cream saloon and have a dish of ice 
cream.’ Can you. with your brain muddled with codfish and 
new potatoes, realize the scene that would follow? Suppose 
after Solomon’s broom brigade had got seated in the ice 
creamery, one of the red headed wives should catch Solomon 
winking at a strange girl at another table. You may think 
Solomon did not know enough to wink, or that he was not 
that kind of a flirt, but he must have been or he could 
never have succeeded in marrying a thousand wives 
in a sparsely settled country. No, sir, it looks to me as 
though Solomon, in all his glory, was an old masher, and 
from what I have seen of men being bossed around with one 
wife, I don’t envy Solomon his thousand. Why, just im- 
agine that gang of wives going and ordering fall bonnets. 
Solomon would have to be a king or a Vanderbilt to stand 
it. Ma wears five dollar silk stockings, and Pa kicks aw- 
fully when the bill comes in. Imagine Solomon putting up 
for a few thousand pair of silk stockings. I am glad you 
will sit down and reason with me in a rational way about 
some of these Bible stories that take my breath away. The 
minister stands me off when I try to talk with him about 
such things, and tells me to study the parable of the Prodi- 
gal Son, and the deacons tell me to go and soak my head. 
There is darn little encouragement for a boy to try and 


peck’s bad boy. 


355 


figure out things. How would you like to have a thousand 
red headed wives come into the store this minute and tell 
you they wanted you to send carriages around to the house 
at three o’clock so they could go for a drive? Or how would 
you like to have a hired girl come rushing in and tell you to 
send up six hundred doctors, because six hundred of your 
wives had been taken with cholera morbus? Or — ” 

“ O, don’t mention it,” said the grocery man, with a shud- 
der. “ I wouldn’t take Solomon’s place, and be the natural 
protector of a thousand wives if anybody would give me 



THE BABY IS TEETHING. 


the earth. Think of getting up in a cold winter morning 
and building a thousand fires. Think of two thousand pair 
of hands in a fellow’s hair! Boy, you have shown me that 
Solomon needed a guardian over him. He didn’t have 
sense.” 

“Yes,” says the boy, “and think of two thousand feet, 
each one as cold as a brick of chocolate ice cream. A man 
would want a back as big as the fence of a fair ground. But 


35 ^ 


PECK*S BAD BOV. 


I don’t want to harrow up your feelings. I must go and put 
some arnica on Pa. He has got home, and says he has been 
to a summer resort on a vacation, and he is all covered with 
blotches. He says it is mosquito bites, but Ma thinks he 
has been shot full of bird shot by some watermelon farmer. 
Ma hasn’t got any sympathy for Pa because he didn’t take 
her along, but if she had been there she would have been 
filled with bird shot, too. But you musn’t detain me. 
Between Pa and the baby I have got all that I can attend to. 
The baby is teething, and Ma makes me put my fingers in 
the baby’s mouth to help it cut teeth. That is a humiliating 
, position for a boy as big as I am. Say, how many babies do 
you figure that Solomon had to buy rubber toothing rings 
for in all his glory?” 

And the boy went out leaving the grocery man reflecting, 
on what a family Solomon must have had, and how he need- 
ed to be the wisest man to get along without a circus after- 
noon and evening. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 


FARM EXPERIENCES. 

The bad boy works on a farm for a deacon — He knows when he has got 
enough — How the deacon made him flax around — And how he 
made it warm for the deacon. 

“Want to buy any cabbages?” said the. bad boy to the 
grocery man, as he stopped at the door of the grocery, 
dressed in a blue wamus, his breeches tucked in his boots, 
and an old hat on his head, with a hole that let out his hair 
through the top. He had got out of a democrat wagon, and 
was holding the lines hitched to a horse about forty years 
old, that leaned against the hitching post to rest, “ Only a 
^ shilling apiece.” 

“O, go ’way,” said the grocery man. “ I only pay three 
cents apiece.” And then he looked at the boy and said 
“ Hello, Hennery, is that you? I have missed you all the 
week, and now you come on to me sudden, disguised as a 
granger. What does this all mean?” 

“ It means that I have been the victim of as vile a con- 
spiracy as ever was known since Caesar was stabbed, and 
Marc Antony orated over his prostrate corpse in the Roman 
forum, to an audience of supes and scene shifters,” and the 
boy dropped the lines on the sidewalk, said, “ whoa, gol 
darn you,” to the horse that was asleep, wiped his boots on 
the grass in front of the store and came in, and seated him- 
self on the old half bushel. “ There, this seems like home 
again.” 

“What’s the row? — who has been playing it on you?” 

357 


358 


peck's bad boy. 


A.nd the grocery man smelled a sharp trade in cabbages, as 
well as other smells peculiar to the farm. 

“Well, ril tell you. Lately our folks have been con- 
stantly talking of the independent life of the farmer, and 
how easy it is, and how they would like it if I would learn 
to be a farmer. They said there was nothing like it, and 
several of the neighbors joined in and said I had the natural 



ability to be one of the most successful farmers in the state. 
They all drew pictures of the fun it was to work on a farm 
where you could get your work done and take your fish-pole 
and go off and catch fish, or a gun, and go out and kill game, 
and how you could ride horses, and pitch hay, and smell 
the sweet perfume, and go to husking bees, and dances, and 
everything, and they got me all worked up so I wanted to 


peck’s bad boy. 


359 


go to work on a farm. Then an old deacon that belongs to 
our church, who runs a farm about eight miles out of town, 
he came on the scene, and said he wanted a boy, and if I 
would go out and work for him he would be easy on me 
because he knew my folks, and we belonged to the same 
church. I can see it now. It was all a put up job on me, 
just like they play three card monte on a fresh stranger. I 
was took in. By gosh, I have been out there a week, and 
here’s what there is left of me. The only way I got a chance to 
come to town was to tell the farmer I could sell cabbages to 
you for a shilling a piece. I knew you sold them for fifteen 
cents and I thought that would give me a shilling. So 
the farmer said he would pay me my wages in cabbages at 
a shilling apiece and only charge me a dollar for the horse 
and wagon to bring them in. So you only pay three cents. 
Here are thirty cabbages, which will come to ninety cents. 
I pay a dollar for the horse, and when I get back to the farm 
I owe the farmer ten cents, besides working a week for noth- 
ing. O, it is all right. I don’t kick, but this ends farming 
for Hennery. I know when I have got enough of an easy 
life on a farm. I prefer a hard life, breaking stones on the 
streets, to an easy, dreamy life on a farm.” 

“They play it on you, didn’t they?” said the grocery 
man. But wasn’t the old deacon a good man to work 
for? ” 

“ Good man nothing,” said the boy, as he took up a piece 
of horseradish and began to grate it on the inside of his 
rough hand. “ I tell you there’s a heap of difference in a 
deacon in Sunday school, telling about sowing wheat and 
tares, and a deacon out on a farm in a hurry season, when 
there is hay to get in and wheat to harvest all at the same 
time. I went out to the farm Sunday evening with the 
deacon and his wife, and they couldn’t talk too much 
about the nice time we would have, and the fun; but the 


36 o 


peck’s bad boy. 


deacon changed more than forty degrees in five minutes 
after we got to the farm. He jumped out of the wagon 
and pulled off his coat and let his wife climb out over the 
wheel, and yelled to the hired girl to bring out the milk 
pail, and told me to fly around and unharness the horse. 



MUD, BURRS AND MOSQUITOES WERE THICK. 


and throw down a lot of hay for the work animals, and 
then told me to run down to the pasture and drive up a lot 
of cows. The pasture was half a mile away, and the cows 
were scattered around in the woods, and the mosquitos were 
thick, and I got all covered with mud and burrs, and stung 


peck’s bad boy. 


361 


with thistles, and when I got the cattle near to the house, 
the old deacon yelled to me that I was slower than molasses 
in the winter, and then I took a club and tried to hurry the 
cows, and he yelled at me to stop hurrying, ’cause I would 
retard the flow of milk. By gosh I was mad. I asked for 
a mosquito-bar to put over me the next time I went after 
the cows, and the people all laughed at me, and when I sat 
down on the fence to scrape the mud off my Sunday pants, 
the deacon yelled like he does in the revival, only he said, 
‘come, come, procrastination' is the thief of time. You get 
up and hump yourself and go and feed the pigs.’ He was 
so darn mean that I could not help throwing a burdock 
burr against the side of the cow he was milking, and it 
struck her right in the flank on the other side from where 
the deacon was. Well, you’d a dide to see the cow jump up 
and blat. All four of her feet were off the ground at a 
time, and I guess most of them hit the deacon on his Sun- 
day vest, and the rest hit the milk pail, and the cow backed 
against the fence and bellered, and the deacon was all covered 
with milk and cow hair, and he got up and throwed the 
three-legged stool at the cow and hit her on the horn and it 
glanced off and hit me on the pants just as I went over the 
fence to feed the pigs. I didn’t know a deacon could talk 
so sassy at a cow, and come so near swearing without actually 
saying cuss words. Well, I lugged swill until I was home- 
sick to my stomach, and then I had to clean off horses, and 
go to the neighbors about a mile away to borrow a lot 
of rakes to use the next day. I was so tired I almost cried, 
and then I had to draw two barrels of water with a well 
bucket, to cleanse for washing the next day, and by that 
time I wanted to die. It was most nine o’clock, and I be- 
gan to think about supper, when the deacon said all they 
had was bread and milk for supper Sunday night, and I 
rasseled with a tin basin of skim milk, and some old back 


362 


peck’s bad boy. 


number bread, and wanted to go to bed, but the deacon 
wanted to know if I was heathen enough to want to go 
to bed without evening prayers. There was no one thing I 
was less mashed on than evening prayers about that minute, 
but I had to take a prayer half an hour long on top of that 
skim milk, and I guess it curdled the milk, for I hadn’t been 
in bed more than half an hour before I had the worst colic 
a boy ever had, and I thought I should die all alone up in 
that garret, on the floor, with nothing to make my last 
hours pleasant but some rats playing with ears of seed 
corn on the floor, and mice running through some dry pea 
pods. But how different the deacon talked in the even- 
ing devotions from what he\did when the cow was gal- 
loping on him in the barn yard. Well, I got through the 
colic and was just getting to sleep when the deacon yelled 
for me to get up and hustle down stairs. I thought maybe 
the house was on fire, ’cause I smelled smoke, and I got 
into my trousers and came down stairs on a jump yelling 
‘fire,’ when the deacon grabbed me and told me to get down 
on my knees, and before I knew it he was into the morning 
devotions, and when he said ‘amen’ and jumped and said 
for us to fire breakfast into us quick and get to work doing 
chores. I looked at the clock and it was just three o’clock 
in the morning, just the time Pa comes home and goes 
to bed in town, when he is running a political campaign. 
Well, sir, I had to jump from one thing to another from 
three o’clock in the morning till nine at night, pitching hay, 
driving reaper, raking and binding, shocking wheat, hoeing 
corn, and everything, and I never got a kind word. I spoiled 
my clothes, and I think another week would make a 
pirate of me. But during it all I had the advantage of 
a pious example. I tell you, you think more of such a man 
as the deacon if you don’t work for him, but only s.ee him 
when he comes to town, and you hear him sing, ‘Heaven is 


peck’s bad boy. 


363 


my Home,’ through his nose. He even is farther from home 
than any place I every heard of. He would be a good mate 
on a Mississippi River steamboat if he could swear, and 
I guess he could soon learn. Now you take these cabbages 
and give me ninety cents, and I will go home and borrow 
ten cents to make up the dollar, and send my chum back 
with the horse and wagon and my resignation. I was not 
cut out for a farmer. Talk about fishing, the only fish I saw 
was a salt white fish we had for breakfast one morning, 
which was salted by Noah, in the ark,” and while the grocery 
man was unloading the cabbages the boy went off to look 
for Jiis chum, and later the two boys were seen driving off 
to the farm with two fishing poks sticking out of the hind 
end the wagon. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 


DRINKING CIDER IN THE CELLAR. 

The deacon will not accept Hennery’s resignation — He wants butter on 
his pancakes — His chum joins him — The skunk in the cellar — The 
poor boy gets the “ager.” 

“Well, I swow, here comes a walking hospital,” said the 
grocery man as the bad boy’s shadow came in the store, fol- 
lowed by the boy, who looked sick and yellow, and tired, 
and he had lost half his flesh. “What’s the matter with 
you? Haven’t got the yellow fever, have you?” and the 
grocery man placed a chair where the invalid could fall into it. 

“No, got the ager,” said the boy as he wiped the perspi- 
ration off his upper lip, and looked around the store to see 
if there was anything in sight that would take the taste of 
quinine out of his mouth. Had too much dreamy life of 
ease on the farm, and been shaking ever since. Darn a farm 
anyway.” 

“What, you haven’t been to work for the deacon any 
more, have you? I thought you sent in your resignation;” 
and the grocery man offered the boy some limberger cheese 
to strengthen him. 

“ O, take that cheese away,” said the boy, as he turned 
pale an4 gagged. “You don’t know what a sick person 
needs any more than a professional nurse. What I want is 
to be petted. You see I went out to the farm with my chum, 
and I took the fish-poles and remained in the woods while 
he drove the horse to the deacon’s; and he gave the deacon 
my resignation, and the deacon wouldn’t accept it. He said 

364 


PECK*S BAD BOY. 


365 


he would hold my resignation until after harvest, and then 
act on it. He said he could plat me in jail for breach of 
promise, if I quit work and left him without giving proper 
notice; and my chum came and told me, and so I concluded 
to go to work rather than have any trouble, and the deacon 
said my chum could work a few days for his board if he 
wanted to. It was pretty darn poor board for a boy to work 
for, but my chum wanted to be with me, so he stayed. Pa 
and Ma came out to the farm to stay a day or two to help. 
Pa was going to help harvest, and Ma was going to help the 
deacon’s wife, but Pa wanted to carry the jug to the field, 
and lay under a tree while the rest of us worked, and Ma 
just talked the arm off the deacon’s wife. The deacon and 
Pa laid in the shade and see my chum and me work, and Ma 
and the deacon’s wife gossiped so they forgot to get din- 
ner, and my chum and me organized a strike, but we were 
beaten by monopoly. Pa took me by the neck and thrashed 
out a shock of wheat with my heels, and the deacon took 
my chum and sat down on him, and we begged and they 
gave us our old situations back. But we got even with 
them that night. I tell you, when a boy tries to be good, 
and quit playing jokes on people, and then has everybody 
down on him, and has his Pa hire him out on a farm to work for 
a deacon that hasn’t got any soul except when he is in church, 
and a boy has to get up in the night to get breakfast and go 
to work, and has to work until late at night, and they kick 
because he wants to put butter on his pancakes, and feed him 
skim milk and rusty fat pork, it makes him tough, and he 
would play a joke on his aged grandmother. After my chum 
and me had got all the chores done that night, we sat out on 
a fence back of the house in the orchard, eating green 
apples in the nioonlight, and trying to think of a plan 
of revenge. Just then I saw a skunk back of the house, 
right by the outside cellar door, and I told my chum 


366 


peck’s bad boy. 


that it would serve them right to drive the skunk 
down cellar and shut the door, but my chum said that 
would be too mean. I asked him if it would be any meaner 
than for the deacon to snatch us bald headed because we 
couldn’t mow hay away fast enough for two men to pitch it, 
and he said it wouldn’t, and so we got on each side of the 
skunk and sort of scared it down cellar, and then we crept 
up softly and closed the cellar doors. Then we went in the 
house and I whispered to Ma and asked her if she didn’t 
think the deacon had some cider, and Ma she began to hint 
that she hadn’t had a good drink of cider since last winter, 
and the deacon’s wife said us boys could take a pitcher and 
go down cellar and draw some. That was too much. I didn’t 
want any cider, anyway, so I told them that I belonged to 
a temperance society, and I should break my pledge if I 
drawed cider, and she said I was a good boy, for me never to 
touch a drop of cider. Then she told my chum where the 
cider barrel was, down cellar; but he ain’t no slouch. He said 
he was afraid to go down cellar in the dark, and so Pa said he 
and the deacon would go down and draw the cider, and the 
deacon’s wife asked Ma to go down too, and look at the fruit 
and berries she had canned for winter, and they all went 
down cellar. Pa carried an old tin lantern with holes in it, 
to light the deacon to the cider barrel; and the deacon’s 
wife had a taller candle to show Ma the canned fruit. I 
tried to get Ma not to go, ’cause Ma is a friend of mine, and 
I didn’t want her to have anything to do with the circus; but 
she said she guessed she knew her business. When anybody 
says they guess they know their own business, that settles 
it with me, and I don’t try to argue with them. Well, my 
chum and me sat there in the kitchen, and I stuffed a piece 
of red table cloth in my mouth to keep from laughing, and 
my chum held his nose with his finger and thumb, so he 
wouldn’t snort right out. We could hear the cider run in 


peck’s bad boy. 


36; 


the pitcher, and then it stopped, and the deacon drank out 
of the pitcher, and then Pa did, and then they drawed some 
more cider, and Ma and the deacon’s wife were talking about 
how much sugar it took to can fruit, and the deacon told 
Pa to help himself out of a crock of fried cakes, and I heard 
the cover on the crock rattle, and just then I heard the old 
tin lantern rattle on the brick floor of the cellar, the deacon 

said ‘ Merciful good- 
ness;’ Pa said ‘ Helen 
and damnation, I am ' 
stabbed;’ and Ma 
yelled“ goodness 
sakes alive; and then 
there was a lot of 
dishpans on the stairs 
begun to fall, and 
they all tried to get 
up cellar at once, and 
they fell over each 
other; and O, my, 
what a frowy smell 
came up to the 
kitchen from the 
cellar. It was enough 
to kill anybody. Pa 
was the first to get to 
the head of the stairs, 
and he stuck his head 
in the kitchen, and drew a long breath, and said 
‘ whoosh! Hennery, your Pa is a mighty sick man.’ The 
deacon came up next, and he had run his head into a hang- 
ing shelf and broken a glass jar of huckleberries, and they 
were all over him, and he said ‘ give me air. Earth’s but a 
desert drear.’ Then Ma and the deacon’s wife came up on 



3 ^^ 


peck’s bad boy. 


a gallop, and they looked tired. Pa began to peel off his 
coat and vest and said he was going out to bury them, and 
Ma said he could bury her, too, and I asked the deacon if 
he didn’t notice a faint odor of sewer gas coming from the 
cellar, and my chum said it smelled more to him as though 
something had crawled in the cellar and died. Well, you 
never saw a sicker crowd, and I felt sorry for Ma and the 

deacon, ’cause their false teeth fell out, and I knew Ma 

* 

couldn’t gossip and the deacon couldn’t talk sassy without 
teeth. But you’d dide to see Pa. He was mad, and thought 
the deacon had put up the job on him, and he was going to 
knock the deacon out in two rounds, when Ma said there 
was no use of getting mad about a dispensation of provi- 
dence, and Pa said one more such dispensation of providence 
would just kill him on the spot. They finally got the house 
aired, and my chum and me slept on the hay in the barn, 
after we had opened the outside cellar door so thd animal 
could get out, and the next morning I had the fever and 
, ague, and Pa and Ma brought me home, and I have been 
firing quinine down my neck ever since. Pa says it is mala- 
ria, but it IS getting up before dayligiT in the morning and 
prowling around a farm doing chores before it is time to do 
chores, and I don’t want any more farm. I thought at Sun- 
day school last Sunday, when the superintendent talked 
about the odor of sanctity that pervaded the house on that 
beautiful morning, and looked at the deacon, that the dea- 
con thought the superintendent was referring to him and 
Pa, but maybe it was an accident. Well, I must go horne 
and shoot another charge of quinine into me,” and the boy 
went out as if he was on his last legs, though he acted as if 
ne was going to have a little fun while he did last. 


PECK’S SUNSHINE 


BEING A COLLECTION OP ARTICLES WRITTEN FOR PECICS SUA! ^ 
MILWAUKEE, WIS., GENERALLY CALCULATED TO 
THROW SUNSHINE INSTEAD OF CLOUDS ON 
THE FACES OF THOSE WHO 
READ THEM, 





"BIT 


EDITOR ‘‘peck’s sun,” AND AUTHOR OF “PECK’S FUN,” 


B-ST HOBBZIliTS. 


Chicago: 

W. B. CONKEY COMPANY, 

Publishers, Printers and Binders. 


24 


COPYRIGHTED, 

1882 , . 

By Belford, Clarke & Co. 

COPYRIGHTED, 

1892 , 

By Morrill, Higgins & Co- 
copyrighted, 

1893 , 

By W. B. Conkey Co. 


CONTENTS. 

About Hell 36 

Arthur will Keep a Cow 61 

Accidents and Incidents at Theatres 146 

Addicted to Limburg Cheese 96 

All About a Sandwich 150 

A Bald-Headed Man Most Crazy 142 

A Case of Paralysis 128 

A Cold, Cheerless Ride 136 

A Doctor of Laws 92 

A Female Knight of Pythias 19 

A Lively T rain Load .* 78 

A Mean Trick 17 

A Peck at a Cheese 48 

A Sewing Machine Given to the Boss Girl 84 

An vFsthetic Female Club Busted 42 

An Arm that is not Reliable — 27 

Bounced from Church^for Dancing 29 

Boys will be Boys 23 

‘ Buttermilk Bibbers 41 

Cannibals and Cork Legs 68 

Changed Satchels ^ 102 

Couldn’t get away from Him 55 

Crossman’s Goat — 12 

Dogs and Human Beings 58 

Don’t Appreciate Kindness 86 

Female Doctors will Never Do 9 

Fooling with the Bible 45 

How Sharper than a Hound’s Tooth... 80 


iv 


CONTENTS. 





Incidents at the Newhall House Fire 118 

Male and Female Mashing 130 

Music on the Waters 71 

Police Searching Women 31 

Religion and Fish 90 

Sense in Little Bugs 107 

Shall there be Hugging in the Parks?— 64 

Some Talk about Monopolies 137 

Spurious Tripe 127 

Summer Resorting 111 

Terrible Time on the Cars 99 

The Bob-Tailed Badger 67 

The Difference 126 

The Difference in Horses 94 

The Deadly Paper Bag 122 

The Gospel Car..*— 114 

The Ministerial Pugilist 69 

The Naughty but Nice Church Choir 104 

The New Coal Stove 134 

The Sudden Fire Works at Racine 164 

The Telescope Fish-Pole Cane 20 

The Uses of the Paper Bag 132 

The Virginia Duel 124 

Two Girls at a Picnic 152 

Uncovering the Top of a Fruit Jar 39 

Woman.Dozing Democrat 75 

Young Fools who Marry 168 

A Word to Colored Concert Troops 55 

Heresy 133 

Hayes on the Grass 134 

Brussels Carpet in a Wood 140 

Mr. Peck Responds 144 - 

Gas at Janesville 154 




NOT GUILTY.” 

Gentlemen of the Jury : 

I stand before you charged with an attempt to “remove” 
the people of America by the publication of a new book, and I 
enter a piea of “Not Guilty.” While admitting that the case 
looks strong against me, there are extenuating circumstances, 
which, if you will weigh them carefully, will go far towards 
acquitting me of this dreadful charge. The facts are that I 
am not responsible, I was sane enough up to the day that i 
decided to publish this book and have been since; but on that 
particular day I was taken possession of by an unseen power — 
a Chicago publisher— who filled my alleged mind with the 
belief that the country demanded the sacrifice, and that there 
would be money in it. If the thing is a failure, I want it 
Understood that I was instigated by the Chicago man; but if 
it is a success, t^en, of course, it was an inspiration of my 
own. 

The book contains nothing but good nature, pleasantly 
told yarns, jokes on my friends; and, through it all, there is 
not intended to be a line or a word that can cause pain or 
sorrow— nothing but happiness. 

Laughter is the best medicine known to the world for the 
cure of many diseases that mankind is subject to, and it has 
been prescribed with success by some of our best practitioners. 
It opens up the pores, and restores the circulation of the 
blood, and the despondent patient that smiles, is in a fair way 



ri 


Not Guilty.^* 


to recovery. While this book is not recommended as an fnfah 
lible cure for consumption, if I can throw the patient into the 
blues by the pictures, I can knock the blues out by vaocinatiug 
with the reading matter. 

To those who are inclined to look upon the bright side of 
life, this book is most respectfully dedicated by the author. 


GEO. W. PECK. 


Milwaukee, Wis., 
March, 1883 



PECK^S SUNSHINE 


FEMALE DOCTORS WILL NEVER DO. 

A St. Louis doctor factory recently turned out a 
dozen female doctors. As long as the female doctors 
were confined to one or two in the whole country, 
and these were experimental, the Sun held its peace, 
and did not complain; but now that the colleges are 
engaged in producing female doctors as a business, 
we must protest, and in so doing will give a few 
reasons why female doctors will not prove a paying 
branch of industry. 

In the first place, if they doctor anybody it must 
be women, and three-fourths of the women had 
rather have a male doctor. Suppose these colleges 
turn out female doctors until there are as many of 
them as there are male doctors, what have they got 
to practice on? 

A man, if there was nothing the matter with him, 
might call in a female doctor; but if he was sick as 
a horse — and when a man is sick he is sick as a 
horse— the last thing he would have around would 
be a female doctor. And why? Because when a 
man wants a female fumbling around him he wants 
to feel well. He don’t want to be bilious, or feverish, 
with his mouth tasting like cheese, and his eyes 
bloodshot, when a female is looking over him arid 
taking an account of stock. 


10 


^ peck’s sunshine. 


Of course these female doctors are all young and 
good looking, and if one of them came into a sick 
room where a man was in bed, and he had chills, and 
was as cold as a wedge, and she should sit up close 
to the side of the bed, and take hold of his hand, his 
pulse would run up to a hundred and fifty and she 
would prescribe for a fever when he had chilblains. 
Then if he died she could be arrested for malpractice. 
O, you can’t fool us on female doctors. 

A man who has been sick and had male doctors, 
knows just how he would feel to have a female 
doctor come tripping in anfl throw her fur lined 
cloak over a chair, take off her hat and gloves, and 
, throw them on a lounge, and come up to the bed 
with a pair of marine blue eyes, with a twinkle in 
the corner, and look him in the wild, changeable 
eyes, and ask him to run out his tongue. Suppose 
he knew his tongue was coated so it looked like a 
yellow Turkish towel, do you suppose he would 
want to run out five or six inches of the lower end 
of it, and let that female doctor put her finger on it, 
to see how it was furred ? Kot much ! He would put 
that tongue up into his cheek, and wouldn’t let her 
*ee it for twenty -five cents admission. 

We have all seen doctors put their hands under 
the bed-clothes and feel a man’s feet to see if they 
were cold. If a female doctor should do that, it 
would give a man cramps in the legs. 

A male doctor can put his hand on a man’s 
stomach, and liver, and lungs, and ask him if he 
feels any pain there; but if a female doctor should 
do the same thing it would make a man sick, and he 
would want to get up and kick himself for employ- 


peck’s sunshine. 


11 


mg A female doctor. 0, there is no use talking, it 
would kill a man. 

Now, suppose a man had heart disease, and a 
female doctor should want to listen to the beating 
of his heart. She would lay her left ear on his left 
breast, so her eyes and rosebud mouth would be 
looking right in his face, and her wavy hair would 
be scattered all around there, getting tangled in the 
buttons of his night shirt. Don’t you suppose his 
heart would get in about twenty extra beats to the 
minute ? You bet ! And she would smile — we will 
bet ten dollars she would smile — and show her pearly 
teeth, and her ripe lips would be working as though 
she were counting the beats, and he would think she 
was trying to whisper to him, and 

Well, what would he be doing all this time? If 
he was not dead yet, which would be a wonder, his 
left hand would brush the hair away from her temple^ 
and kind of stay there to keep the hair away, and 
his right hand would get sort of nervous and move 
around to the back of her head, and when she had 
counted the heart beats a few minutes and was rais- 
ing her head, he would draw the head up to him 
and kiss her once for luck, if he was as bilious as a 
Jersey swamp angel, and have her charge it in the 
bill; and then a reaction would set in, and he would 
be as weak as a cat, and she would have to fan him 
and rub his head till he got over being nervous, and 
then make out her prescription after he got asleep. 
No; all of a man’s symptoms change when a female 
doctor is practicing on him, and she would kill him 
dead. 

The Sun is a woman’s rights paper, and believes 
in allowing women to do anything that they can do 


12 


PECK^S SUNSHINE, 


as well as men, and is in favor of paying them as 
well as men are paid for the same work, taking all 
things into consideration; but it is opposed to their 
trifling with human life, by trying to doctor a total 
stranger. These colleges are doing a great wrong 
in preparing these female doctors for the war path, ' 
and we desire to enter a protest in behalf of twenty 
million men who could not stand the pressure. 

GROSSMAN’S GOAT. 

Mr. Crossman, of Marshall street, is a man who 
was once a boy himself, if his memory serves him, 
and no boy of his is going to ask him for anything 
that is in his power to purchase and be refused. But 
when his boy asked him to buy a goat Mr. Crossman 
felt hurt. It was not the expense of the goat that he 
looked at, but he never had felt that confidence in 
the uprightness of the moral character of a goat 
that he wanted to feel. 

A goat he always associated in his mind with a 
tramp, and he did not feel like bringing among the 
truly good children of the neighborhood a goat. He 
told his boy that he was sorry he had lavished his 
young and tender affections on a goat, and hoped 
that he would try and shake off the feeling that his 
life’s happiness would be wrecked if he should re- 
fuse to buy him a goat. The boy put his sleeve up 
over his eyes and begar to shed water, and that set- 
tled it. 

Mr. Crossman’s religion is opposed to immersion, 
and when the infant baptism began his proud spirit 
was conquered, and he told the boy to lead on andT 
he would buy the goat. They went over into the 


peck’s sunshine. 


13 


Polack settlement and a Countess there, who takes 
in washing, was bereaved of the goat, while Mr. 
Crossman felt that he was a dollar out of pocket. 

Now that he thinks of it, Mr. Crossman is confi- 
dent that the old lady winked as he led the goat 
away by a piece of clothes line, though at the time 
he looked upon the affair as an honorable business 
transaction. If he had been buying a horse he would 
have asked about the habits of the animal, and 
would probably have taken the animal on trial. But 
it never occurred to him that there was any cheat- 
ing in goats. 

The animal finally pulled Mr. Crossman home, at 
the end of the clothes line, and was placed in a 
neighbor’s barn at eventide to be ready for the morn - 
ing’s play, refreshed. About 6 o’clock in the morn- 
ing, Mr. Crossman was looking out of his window 
when he saw the neighboring lady come out of the 
barn door head first, and the goat was just taking 
its head away from her polonaise in a manner that 
Mr. Crossman considered, with his v^ews of pro- 
priety, decidedly impolite. 

Believing there was some misunderstanding, and 
that the goat was jealous of a calf that was in the 
barn, and that the matter could be satisfactorily ex- 
plained to the goat, Mr. Crossman put the other leg 
in his trousers, took a cistern pole and went to the 
front. The goat saw him coming, and rushed out 
into the yard and stood up on its hind feet and gave 
the grand hailing sign of distress, and as Mr. Cross- 
man turned to see if any of the neighbors were up, 
he felt an earthquake strike him a little below where 
he had his suspenders tied around his body. Mr. 
Crossman repeated a portion of the beautiful Easter 


14 


peck’s sunshine. 


service and climbed up on an ask barrel, where he 
stood poking the goat on the ear with the cisterK 
pole, when Mr. Crombie, who lives hard by. and 
who had come out to split some kindling wood, ap- 
peared on the scene. 

Mr. Crombie is a man who grasps a situation at 
once, and though he is a man who deliberates much 
on any great undertaking, when he saw the lady be- 
hind the coal box, and Mr. Crossman on the ash bar- 
rel, he felt that there was need of a great mind right 
there, and he took his with him over the fence, in 
company with a barrel stave and a hatchet. He 
told Crossman that there was only one way to deal 
with a goat, and that was to be firm and look him 
right in the eye. He said Sep. Wintermute, at 
Whitewater, once had a goat that used to drive the 
boys all around, but he could do anything with him, 
by looking him in the eye. 

He walked toward the goat, with “his eyes sot,’' 
and Mr. Crossman says one spell he thought, by the 
way the goat looked sheepish, that Crombie was a 
regular lion tamer, but just as he was about to 
parj^Jyze the animal, Mr. Crombie caught the strings 
of his drawers, which were dragging on the ground, 
in the nails of a barrel hoop, and as he stooped down 
to untangle them the goat kicked him with his 
head, at a point about two chains and three links in 
a northwesterly direction from the small of his back. 
Crombie gave a sigh, said, “I die by the hand of an 
assassin,” and jumped up on a wagon, with the bar- 
rel stave and hatchet, and the hoop tangled in his legs. 

The goat had three of them treed, and was look- 
ing for other worlds to conquer, when Mr. Nowell, 
who was out for a walk, saw the living statues, and 


PECK'S SUNSHINE. 


IS 


came in to hear the news. Mr. Crossman ^aid he 
didn’t know what had got into the goat, unless it 
was a tin pail or a lawn mower that was in the barn, 
but he was evidently mad, and he advised Mr. No- 
well to go for the police. 

Nowell said a man that had raised cub bears had 
no right to be afraid of a goat. He said all you 
wanted to do, in subduing the spirit of animals, was 
to gain their confidence. He said he could, in two 
minutes, so win the affections of that goat that it 
would follow him about like a dog, and he went up 
and stroked the animal’s head, scratched its ear, and 
asked them if they could not see they had taken the 
wrong course with the goat. He said a goat was a 
good deal like a human being. You could coax, but 
you could not drive. ‘‘Come, Billy,” said he, as he 
moved off, snapping his fingers. 

It is Mr. Nowell’s unbiased opinion that Billy did 
come. Not that he saw Billy come, but he had a 
vague suspicion, from a feeling of numbness some 
two feet from the base of the brain, that William 
had arrived in that immediate vicinity, and while 
he was recalling his scattered thoughts and feeling 
for any pieces of spine that might have become de- 
tached from the original column, Billy came again 
and caught three of Mr. Nowell’s fingers in the pile 
driver. That was talk enough between gentlemen, 
and Mr. Nowell got his back against a fence and 
climbed up on top backwards. 

When he caught his breath he said that was the 
worst shock he ever experienced since he fell off the 
step ladder last summer. He said he had rather 
break a bear to ride any time. 


16 


peck’s sunshine. 


At this point Mr. Crombie espied a letter carrier 
on the other side of the street, and called him over. 
He told the letter carrier if he would step into the 
yard and drive the goat in the barn they would aU 
unite in a petition to have the salaries of letter car- 
riers raised. There is no class of citizens more ac- 
commodating than our letter carriers, and this one 
came in and walked up to the goat and pushed the 
animal with his foot. 

“ This goat seems tame enough,” said he, turning 
around to speak to Mr. Crossman. His words had 
not more than vaporized in the chill air before the 
goat had planted two trip hammer blows into the 
seat of government, and the letter carrier went into 
the barn, fell over a wheelbarrow, and the letters 
from his sack were distributed in a box stall. 

It was a beautiful sight to look upon, and they 
would have been there till this time had it not been 
that the Countess happened to come along gather- 
ing swill, and the party made up a purse of three 
dollars for her if she would take the goat away. 

She took a turnip top from her swill pail, offered 
it to the goat, and the animal followed her off, 
bleating and showing every evidence of content- 
ment, and the gentlemen got down from the posi- 
tions they had assumed, and they shook hands and 
each took a bloody oath that he would not tell about 
it, and they repaired to their several homes and used 
arnica on the spots where the goat had kicked 
them. 

The only trouble that is liable to arise out of this 
is that the postmaster threatens to commence an ac- 
tion against Crossman for obstructing the mails. 


peck's sunshine. 


ir 


A MEAN THICK. 

Probably the meanest trick that was ever played 
a white man was played in Milwaukee, and the 
fact that there is no vigilance committee there is the 
only reason the perpetrators of the trick are alive. 
A business man had just purchased a new stiff hat, 
and he went into a saloon with half a dozen of his 
friends to fit the hat on his head. They all took 
beer, and passed the hat around so all could see it. 
One of the meanest men that ever held a county of- 
fice went to the bar tender and had a thin slice of 
Limburger cheese cut off, and when the party were 
looking at the frescoed ceiling through beer glasses 
this wicked person slipped the cheese under the 
sweat leather of the hat, and the man put it on and 
walked out. 

Th^ man who owned the hat is one of your ner- 
vous people, who is always complaining of being 
sick, and who feels as though some dreadful disease 
is going to take possession of him and carry him off. 
He went back to his place of business, took off his 
hat and laid it on the table, and proceeded to answer 
some letters. He thought he detected a smell, and, 
when his partner asked him if he didn’t feel sick, he 
said he believed he did. The man turned pale and 
said he guessed he would go home. He met a man 
on the sidewalk who said the air was full of miasma, 
and in the street car a man who sat next to him 
moved away to the end of the car, and asked him if 
he had just come from Chicago. The man with the 
hat said he had not, when the stranger said they 
were having a great deal of smallpox there, and he 

guessed he would get out and walk, and he pulled 
2 


18 


peck’s sunshine. 


the bell and jumped off. The cold perspiration 
broke out on the forehead of the man with the new 
hat, and he took it off to wipe his forehead, when 
the whole piece of cheese seemed to roll over and 
breathe, and the man got the full benefit of it, and 
came near fainting away. 

He got home and his wife met him and asked him 
what was the matter? He said he believed mortifi- 
cation had set in, and she took one whiff as he took 
off his hat, and said she should think it had. “Where 
did you get into it?” said she. “Get into it?” said 
the man, “ I have not got into anything, but some 
deadly disease has got hold of me, and I shall not 
live.” She told him if any disease that smelled like 
that had got hold of him and was going to be 
chronic, she felt as though he would be a burden to 
himself if he lived very long. She got his clothes 
off, soaked his feet in mustard water, and he slept. 
The man slept and dreamed that a smallpox fiag 
was hung in front of his house and that he was rid- 
ing in a butcher wagon to the pest house. 

The wife sent for a doctor, and when the man of 
pills arrived she told him all about the case. The 
doctor picked up the patient’s new hat, tried it on 
and got a sniff. He said the hat was picked before 
it was ripe. The doctor and the wife held a post- 
mortem examination of the hat, and found the slice 
of Limberger. “ Few and short were the prayers 
they said.” They woke the patient, and, to prepare 
his mind for the revelation that was about to be 
made, the doctor asked him if his worldly affairs 
were in a satisfactory condition. He gasped and 
said they were. The doctor asked him if he had 
made his will. He said he had not, but that he 


t>ECK^g SUNSHINE. 


19 


wanted a lawyer sent for at once. The doctor asked 
him if he felt as though he was prepared to shuffle 
oif. The man said he had always tried to lead a 
different life, and had tried to be done by the same 
as he would do it himself, but that he might have 
made a misdeal some way, and he would like to have a 
minister sent for to take an account of stock. Then 
the doctor brought to the bedside the hat, opened up 
the sweat-leather, and showed the dying man what 
it was that smelled so, and told him he was as well 
as any man in the city. 

The patient pinched himself to see if he was alive, 
and jumped out of bed and called for his revolver, 
and the doctor couldn’t keep up with him on the 
way down town. The last we saw of the odoriferous 
citizen he was trying to bribe the bar-tender to tell 
him which one of those pelicans it was that put that 
slice of cheese in his hat-lining. 

A FETVrAl.E KNIGHT OF PYTHIAS. 

A WOMAN of Bay City, Michigan, disguised herself 
as a man and clerked in a store for a year, and then 
applied for membership in the Knights of Pythias 
and was initiated. During the work of the third 
degree her sex was discovered. It seems that in the 
third degree they have an India rubber rat and a 
celluloid snake, which run by clockwork inside, 
and which were very natural indeed. The idea is 
to let them run at the candidate for initiation to see 
if he will flinch. When the snake ran at the girl 
she kept her nerve all right, but when the rat tried 
to run up her trousers leg she grabbed her imaginary 
skirtA m both hands and jumped onto a refrigerator 


25 


20 


peck’s sunshine. 


that was standing near, (which is used in the worK 
of the fourth degree) and screamed bloody murder. 
The girl is a member of the order, however, and 
there is no help for it. This affair may open the 
eyes of members of secret societies and cause them 
to investigate. One lodge here, we understand, 
takes precaution against the admission of women 
by examining carefully the feet of applicants. If 
the feet are cold enough to freeze ice cream the can- 
didate is black-balled. 

THE TELESCOPE PISH -POLE CANE. 

There is one thing we want to set our face against 
and try and break up, and that is the habit of young 
and middle aged persons going fishing on Sunday, 
when going on the Summer excursions to the coun- 
try. The devil, or some other inventor, has origin- 
ated a walking-stick that looks as innocent as a 
Sunday school teacher, but within it is a roaring 
lion, in the shape of a fish-pole. We have watched 
young fellows, and know their tricks. Sunday 
morning they say to their parents that they have 
agreed to go over on the West Side and attend early 
mass with a companion, just to hear the exquisite 
music, and, by the way, they may not be home to 
dinner. And they go from that home, with their 
new cane, looking as pious as though they were 
passing the collection plate. When they get around 
the corner they whoop it up for the depot, and 
shortly they are steaming out into the country. 
They have a lot of angle worms in an envelope in 
their vest pockets, and a restaurant colored man, 
who has been seen the night before, meets them at 


peck's sunshine. 


21 


the depot and hands them a basket of sandwiches 
with a bottle sticking out. 

Arriving at the summer resort, they go to the 
bank of the lake and take a boat ride, and when 
well out in the lake they begin to unbosom the cane. 
Taking a plug out of the end of it, they pull out a 
dingus and three joints of fish-pole come out, and 
they tie a line on the end, put an angle worm on the 
hook, and catch fish. That is the kind of ‘‘mass’^ 
they are attending. 

At night the train comes back to town, and the 
sunburnt young men, with their noses peeled, hand 
a basket to the waiting colored man, which smells 
of fish, and they go home and tell their parents they 
went out to Forest Home Cemetery in the afternoon, 
and the sun was awful hot. The good mother knows 
she smells fish on her son’s clothes, but she thinks 
it is some new kind of perfumery, and she is silent. 

An honest up-and*up fish-pole is a thing of beauty 
and a joy forever, if the fishing is good, but one of 
fchese deceptive, three carde monte, political fish- 
poles, that shoves in and appears to be a cane, is in- 
cendiary, and ought to be suppressed. There ought 
to be a law passed to suppress a fish-pole that passes 
in polite society for a cane, and in such a moment 
as ye think not is pulled out to catch fish. There is 
nothing square about it, and the invention of that 
blasted stem winding fish-pole is doing more to ruin 
this country than all the political parties can over- 
come. If there was a law to compel the owners of 
those walking-sticks to put a sign on their canes, 
“This is a fish-pole,” there would be less canes tak- 
en on these Sunday excursions in summer. 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 

Look not upon the walking-stick when it is hol- 
low, and palls out, for at last it giveth thee awa^, 
young fellow. 


The Sun is in receipt of an invitation to attend 
the opening of a new hotel in an Iowa city, but it 
will be impossible to attend. We remember one 
Iowa hotel which we visited in 1869, when the Wis- 
consin editors stopped there on the way back from 
Omaha, — the time when a couple of bed bugs took 
Uncle David Atwood up on the roof and were going 
to throw him off, and they would have done it, only 
a party of cockroaches took his part and killed the 
bed bugs. 

Sam Ryan will remember how there was a crop of 
new potatoes growing on the billiard room floor in 
the dirt, that were all blossomed out ; and Charley 
Seymour can tell how he had to argue for an hour 
to convince the colored cook that the peculiar smell 
of the scrambled eggs was owing to some of them 
being rotten. There were four waiters to a hundred 
guests, and it was a sight long to be remembered to 
see Mrs. Seymour and Mrs. Atwood carry their 
broiled chicken back to the kitchen and pick the 
feathers off, while good Uncle McBride, of Sparta, 
got into an altercation over his fried fish because the 
fish had not been scaled; where it was said the only 
thing that was not sour was the vinegar, and where 
the only thing that was not too small was the bill, 
and where every room smelled like a morgue, and 
the towels in the rooms had not taken a bath since 
1827. 


peck’s sunshine. 


23 


At this hotel the proprietor would take a guest’s 
napkin to wipe his nose, and the barefooted waiter 
girl would slip up on the rare-done fried egg spilled 
on the dining-room floor, and wipe the yolk off her 
dress on a guest’s linen coat tail. That is all we 
want of a hotel in that place. 

BOYS WILL BE BOYS. 

Not many months ago there was a meeting of 
ministers in Wisconsin, and after the holy work in 
which they were engaged had been done up to the 
satisfaction of all, a citizen of the place where the 
conference was held invited a large number of them 
to a collation at his house. After supper a dozen of 
them adjourned to a room up stairs to have a quiet 
smoke, as ministers sometimes do, when they got 
to talking about old times, when they attended 
school and were boys together, and The Sun man, 
who was present, disguised as a preacher, came to 
the conclusion that ministers were rather human 
than otherwise when they are young. 

One two-hundred pound delegate with a cigar be- 
tween hi^ Angers, blew the smoke out of the mouth 
which but a few hours before was uttering a suppli- 
cation to the Most High to make us all good, 
punched a thin elder in the ribs with his thumb and 
said: “Jim, do you remember the time we carried 
the cow and calf up into the recitation room?” For 
a moment “ Jim ” was inclined to stand on his dig- 
nity, and he looked pained, until they all began to 
laugh, when he looked around to see if any worldly 
person was present, and satisfying himself that we 
were all truly good, he said: “You bet your life I 


24 


PECK’S SUNSHINE. 


remember it. I have got a scar on my shin now 
where that d — blessed cow hooked me,” and he be- 
gan to roll up his trousers leg to show the scar. 
They told him they would take his word, and he 
pulled down his pants and said: 

‘‘Well, you see I was detailed to attend to the 
calf, and I carried the calf up stairs, assisted by Bill 
Smith — who is now preaching in Chicago; got a soft 
thing, five thousand a year, and a parsonage fur- 
nished, and keeps a team, and if one of those horses 
is not a trotter then I am no 3udge of horse flesh or 
of Bill, and if he don’t put on an old driving coat 
and go out on the road occasionally and catch on 
for a race with some worldly-minded man, then I 
am another. You hear me — well, I never knew a 
calf was so heavy, and had so many hind legs. Kick! 
Why, bless your old alabaster heart, that calf 
walked all over me, from Genesis to Kevelations. 
And say, we didn’t get much of a breeze the next 
morning, did we, when we had to clean out the re- 
citation room?” 

A solemn-looking minister, with red hair, who 
was present, and whose eyes twinkled some through 
the smoke, said to another : 

“Charlie, you remember you were completely 
gone on the professor’s niece who was visiting there 
from Poughkeepsie ? What become of her ?” 

Charlie put his feet on the table, struck a match 
on his trousers, and said : 

“Well, I wasn’t gone on her, as you say, but just 
liked her. Not too well, you know, but just well 
enough. She had a color of hair that I could never 
stand— just the color of yours. Hank— and when she 
got to going with a printer I kind of let up, and 


peck’s sunshine. 


25 


they were married. I understand he is editing a 
paper somewhere in Illinois, and getting rich. It 
was better fur her, as now she has a place to live, 
and does not have to board around like a country 
school ma’am, as she would if she had married me.” 

A dark-haired man, with a coat ])uttoned clear to 
the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, 
with no more expression than a wooden decoy duck, 
who was smoking a briar-wood pipe that he had 
picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, 
knocked the ashes out in a spittoon, and said : 

“Boys, do you remember the time we stole that 
three-seated wagon and went out across the marsh 
to Kingsley’s farm, after watermelons ?” 

Four of them said tliey remembered it well enough, 
and Jim said all he asked was to live long enough 
to get even with Bill Smith, the Chicago preacher, 
for suggesting to him to steal a bee-hive on the trip. 
“ Why,” said he, “ before I had got twenty feet with 
that hive, every bee in it had stung me a dozen 
times. And do you remember how we played it on 
the professor, and made him believe that I had the 
chicken-pox ? O, gentlemen, a glorious immortal- 
ity awaits you beyond the grave for lying me out of 
that scrape.” 

The fat man hitched around uneasy in his chair 
and said they all seemed to have forgotten the prin- 
cipal event of that excursion, and that was how he 
tried to lift a bull dog over the fence by the teeth, 
which had become entangled in a certain portion of 
his wardrobe that should not be mentioned, and how 
he left a sample of his trousers in the possession of 
the dog, and how the farmer came to the college the 
next day with his_eyes blacked, and a piece of 


26 


peck’s sunshine. 


trousers cloth done up in a paper, and wanted the 
professor to try and match it with the pants of some 
of the divinity students, and how he had to put on a 
pair of nankeen pants and hide his cassimeres in the 
boat house until the watermelon scrape blew over 
and he could get them mended. 

Then the small brunette minister asked if he was 
not entitled to some credit for blacking the farmer’s 
eyes. Says he: ‘‘ When he got over the fence and 
grabbed the near horse by the bits, and said he 
would have the whole gang in jail, I felt as though 
something had got to be done, and I jumped out on 
the other side of the wagon and walked around to 
him and put up my hands and gave him ‘ one, two,, 
three ’ about the nose, with my blessing, and he let 
go that horse and took his dog back to the house.” 

‘‘Well,” says the red haired minister, “those 
melons were green, anyway, but it was the fun of 
stealing them that we were after.” 

At this point the door opened and the host entered, 
and, pushing the smoke away with his hands, he 
said: “Well, gentlemen, are you enjoying your- 
selves?” 

They threw their cigar stubs in the spittoon, the 
solemn man laid the brier wood pipe where he got 
it, and the fat man said: 

“ Brother Drake, we have been discussing the evil 
effects of indulging in the weed, and we have come 
to the conclusion that while tobacco is always bound 
to be used to a certain extent by the thoughtless, it 
is a duty the clergy owe to the community to dis- 
countenance its use on aU possible occasions. Per* 
haps we had better adjourn to the parlor, and after 
asking divine guidance take our departure.” 


peck’s sunshine. 


37 

After they had gone the host looked at his cigar 
box, and came to the conclusion that somebody 
must have carried off some cigars in his pocket. 

AN ARM THAT IS NOT RELIABLE. 

A YOUNG fellow about nineteen, who is going with 
his first girl, and who lives on the West Side, has 
got the symptoms awfully. He just thinks of noth- 
ing else but his girl, and when he can be with her, 
— which is seldom, on account of the old folks, — he 
is there, and when he cannot be there, he is there 
or thereabouts, in his mind. He had been trying for 
three months to think of something to give his girl 
for a Christmas present, but he couldn’t make up 
his mind what article would cause her to think of 
him the most, so the day before Christmas he unbo- 
somed himself to his employer, and asked his advice 
as to the proper article to give. The old man is 
baldheaded and mean. “You want to give her some- 
thing that will be a constant reminder of you ?” 
“Yes,” he said, “that was what was the matter.” 
“Does she have any corns ?” asked the old wretch. 
The boy said he had never inquired into the condi- 
tion of her feet, and wanted to know what corns 
had to do with it. The old man said that if she had 
corns, a pair of shoes about two sizes too small 
would cause her mind to dwell on him a good deal. 
The boy said shoes wouldn’t do. The old man hesi- 
tated a moment, scratched his head, and finally 
said : 

“ I have it ! I suppose, sir, when you are alone 
with her, in the parlor, you put your arm around her 
waist ; do you not, sir ?” 


m 


peck's sunshine. 


The young man blushed, and said that was abouT 
the size of it. 

“I presume she enjoys that part of the discourse, 
eh 

The boy said that, as near as he could tell, by the 
way she acted, she was not opposed to being held up. 

‘‘Then, sir, I can tell you of an article that will 
make her think of you in that position all the time, 
from the moment she gets up in the morning till she 
retires." 

“ Is there any attachment to it that will make her 
dream of me all night ?" asked the boy. 

“No, sir ! Don’t be a hog," said the bad man. 

“ Then what is it ?” 

The old man said one word, “Corset!" 

The young man was delighted, and he went to a 
store to buy a nice corset. 

“What size do you want?" asked the girl who 
waited on him. 

That was a puzzler. He didn’t know they came 
in sizes. He was about to tell her to pick out the 
smallest size, when he happened to think of some- 
thing. 

“ Take a tape measure and measure my arm ; that 
will just fit." 

The girl looked wise, as though she had been there 
herself, found that it was a twenty-two inch corset 
the boy wanted, and he went home and wrote a note 
and sent it with the corset to the girl. He didn’t 
hear anything about it till the following Sunday, 
when he called on her. She received him coldly, 
and handed him the corset, saying, with a tear in 
her eye, that she had never expected to be insulted 
by him. He told her he had no intention of insult- 


peck’s sunshine. 


39 


ing her ; that he could think of nothing that would 
cause her to think of the gentle pressure of his arm 
around her waist as a corset, but if she felt insulted 
he would take his leave, give the corset to some poor 
family, and go drown himself. 

He was about to go away, when she burst out cry- 
ing, and sobbed out the following words, wet with 
salt brine : 

It was v-v-v-very thoughtful of y-y-you, but I 
couldn^t feel it! It is f-f-four sizes too b-b-big ! Why 
didn’t you get number eighteen ? You are silent, 
you cannot answer, enough !” 

They instinctively found their way to the sofa ', 
mutual explanations followed ; he measured her 
waist again ; saw where he had made a mistake by 
his fingers lapping over on the first turn, and he 
vowed, by the beard of the prophet, he would 
change it for another, if she had not worn it and got 
it soiled. They are better now. 

BOUNCED FROM CHURCH FOR DANCING. 

The Presbyterian synod at Erie, Pa. , has turned 
a lawyer named Donaldson out of the church. The 
charge against him was not that he was a lawyer, 
as might be supposed, but that he had danced a 
quadrille. It does not seem to us as though there 
could be anything more harmless than dancing a 
cold-blooded quadrille. It is a simple walk around, 
and is not even exercise. Of course a man can, if 
he chooses, get in extra steps enough to keep his 
feet warm, but we contend that no quadrille, where 
they only touch hands, go down in the middle, and 


30 


peck’s sunshine. 


alamand left, can work upon a man’s religion enough 
to cause him to backslide. 

If it was this new “ waltz quadrille ” that Donald- 
son indulged in, where there is intermittent hug- 
ging, and where the head gets to whirling, and a 
man has to hang on to his partner quite consider- 
able, to keep from falling all over himself, and 
where she looks up fondly into his eyes and as 
though telling him to squeeze just as hard as it 
seemed necessary for his convenience, we should 
not wonder so much at the synod hauling him over 
the coals for cruelty to himself, but a cold quadrille 
has no deviltry in it. 

We presume the wicked and perverse Mr. Donald- 
son will join another church that allows dancing 
judiciously administered, and may yet get to heaven 
ahead, of the Presbyterian synod, and he may be 
elected to some high position there, as Arthur was 
here, after the synod of Hayes and Sherman had 
bounced him from the Custom House for dancing 
the great spoils walk around. 

It is often the case here, and we do not know why 
it may not be in heaven, that the ones that are 
turned over and shook up, and the dust knocked out 
of them, and their metaphorical coat tail filled with 
boots, find that the whirligig of time has placed 
them above the parties who smote them, and we 
can readily believe that if Donaldson gets a first- 
class position of power, above the skies, he will 
make it decidedly warm for his persecutors when 
they come up to the desk with their grip sacks and 
register and ask for a room with a bath, and a fire 
escape. He will be apt to look up at the key rack 
and tell them everything is full, but they can find 


PteCK^S SUNSHINE. 


31 


pretty fair accommodations at the other house, 
down at the Hot Springs, on the European plan, by 
Mr. Devil, formerly of Chicago. 

POLICE SEARCHING WOMEN. 

A NOVEL SCENE IN MILWAUKEE POLICE COURT. 

There is a movement on foot to provide for lady 
attendants at the Police Station, so that when a 
woman is arrested, and it is necessary to search her 
for concealed weapons, or money or incendiary doc- 
uments, that duty can be performed by a person of 
the same sex as the prisoner. The Sun is anxious 
that this new departure be adopted at once, as it is 
very annoying for us to be called away from our 
business, every day or two, to aid the police — that 
is, of course, we are willing to be of assistance to 
anybody, but there are times — anybody will admit 
that. 

The need of lady members of the police force was 
never illustrated any better than when the police 
arrested the women for passing counterfeit silver 
quarters, about six months ago. There was an old- 
ish woman and a young woman, and when they 
were taken to the police office the reporters of the 
city papers were there, as usual, ready to lend a 
helping hand. The searching of the old lady was 
done in short order, by Detective Smith, who went 
about it in a business-like manner ; but when it was 
time to search the young woman, and he looked 
into her soft, liquid eyes, and saw the emotion that 
she could not suppress, his heart failed him, and he 
sat down to write out his resignation. Tears came 


32 


peck’s sunshine. 


into his large, fawn-like eyes, and he called upon 
M.r. Northrop, correspondent of the Chicago Times, 
to assist him. Mr. Northrop had been inured to 
hardships, and knew much about the manner in 
which female persons conceal money, and being one 
of the ‘‘Willing Workers,” he told Mr. Smith that 
he would help him. 

The lady was told to remove her outward apparel, 
and to look steadily out of the window. She got 
behind a curtain-cord, and, in less time than it takes 
to write it, she threw her dress to the men, from her 
concealment behind the curtain-cord. The two men 
found a pocket in the dress, but to save them they 
couldn’t find the pocket hole. The dress was turned 
the other side out forty times, to find the pocket 
Hole. 

Mr. Yenowine, of the News, who was present, 
said if they would hang the dress up on a hook he 
could find the pocket hole in the dark. He said 
ihere couldn’t anybody fool him on finding a pocket 
lole in a dress. 

The dress was hung in a closet, and Mr. Yenowine 
iroceeded on the arctic exploring expedition, while 
x\ir. Northrop and the detective were examining a 
3 or set that the young woman had thrown on the 
loor, looking for bogus quarters. The News man, 
vvith all his knowledge of dress pockets, came out 
unsuccessful, and said he must have lost the combi- 
nation, and accused the janitor of giving it away. 
Mr. Smith suggested that they cut the pocket off, 
out the district attorney, Mr. McKenney, said it 
would be clearly against the law. He said that 
would be burglary. In the meantime the young 
woman had kept on shucking herself, until Mr. 


peck’s sunshine. 


33 


Neiman, of the Sentinel, became faint aiiu went out 
on the steps to get a breath of fresh air, from which 
position he looked through the window. 

While the gentlemen were wondering if there 
were no rules of etiguette published that would make 
it easj and polite to search a woman for bogus two 
shilling pieces, the wonian threw an article cf 
female wearing apparel out on the floor for them to 
examine that fairly frightened them. 

Merciful heavens,” said Mr. Yenowine, who wss 
at that time a young and innocent person, unused 
to the ways of the world, she has exploded.” 

Northrop poked it with his cane and said, ‘‘No, 
those always come off,” and he put on an air of 
superiority over the boys which was annoying. 

“What, always?” said Mr. Neiman, who had his 
Angers up before his face, and was blushing as 
though he had intermittent fever. / 

“Well, most always,” said Mr. Northrop, who had 
taken it up, and was examining it with a critic’s eye. 

“ I presume those are a bustle, are they not?” said 
innocent Yenowine. 

“Go aff, till the divil wid yer bushtle,” said Mr. 
Smith, “ I know bether. Gintlemen, I am a plain 
shpoken man, and for me age have seen many thry- 
ing situations, but if this was me lasht day on earth 
I should shwear that was no more a bushtle than 1 
am. Bushtles are never twins.” 

Mr. Harger, of the Wisconsin, who had hidden 
behind the stove pipe, was asked by Mr. Smith what 
he thought they were, whether it might not be an 
infernal machine. Mr. Harger said he had never 
known one to explode. He said when he was re- 
porting legislative proceedings the members drew 


u 


peck’s sunshm. 


tJiose with their stationery, from tlie superintendent 
of public property, but he had no idea what they did 
with them. 

At this point Mr. Aldrich, who had just come in, 
was asked to examine it and tell what it was. Mr. 
^Idrich took it up like a thing of life, and gazed up- 
on it as though trying to recall something to his 
mind. Placing his finger, the one with the diamond 



• BUSHTLES ABE NEVER TWINS.’ 


ring on, to his corrugated forehead, he paused for a 
moment and finally gave his opinion that they were 
life preservers. He said that in Boston all women 
wore them, especially when they were out on excur- 
sions, or picnics. “See,” says he, as he hefted it. 



PECK’S SUNSmNE. 


35 


it is filled with wind. Now, in case of accident, 
that would float a woman on top of water until she 
could be rescued. Let us demonstrate this matter 
by putting it on Mr. Boyington, of the Sentinel, and 
taking him to the morgue and placing him in the 
bath tub, ’’and he proceeded to fasten the life pre- 
server around the calf of Mr. Boyington’s leg. 

Say, where are you putting it?” says Mr. B., as 
he struggled to keep from laughing right out. “You 
fellows don’t know as much as Thompson’s colt. If 
I know my own heart, and I think I do, a life pre- 
server goes on undoi?' the vest.” 

Mr. Aldrich said he didn’t pretend to know any 
more than anybody else. All he knew about these 
things personally was that he had seen them hang- 
ing up in stores, for sale, and one day when he was 
shopping he asked one of the lady clerks what it 
was hanging up there, and she said it was a life pre- 
server, and asked him if he wanted one, and he tdld 
her no, he was only inquiring for a friend of his, 
who rode a bicycle. He didn’t know but it might be 
something that went with a bicycle. 

All the time this discussion was going on we sat 
by the safe in the police office. We never were so 
sorry for a lot of innocent young men, never. The 
girl looked at us and winked, as much as to say, 
“Oldman, why do you not come to the rescue of 
these young hoodlums, who don’t know what they 
are talking about, and take the conceit out of them,” 
and so we explained to them, in the best language 
we could command, the uses and abuses of the gar- 
ment they were examining, and showed them how 
it went on, and how the invention of it filled a want 
long felt by our Anaerican peonle. They all admit- 


S6 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


ted that we were right, and that it was a counterfeit 
well calculated to deceive, and we believe now that 
the woman was convicted of counterfeiting mainly 
on the testimony of the reporters. However that 
may be, we desire to impress upon the authorities 
the importance of employing ladies at the police of- 
fice to examine women who are arrested for crime. 
The police cannot always depend on having a news- 
paper man around. 

ABOUT HELL. 

An item is going the rounds of the papers, to illus- 
trate how large the sun is, and how hot it is, which 
asserts that if an icicle a million miles long, and a 
hundred thousand miles through, should be thrust 
into one of the burning cavities of the sun, it would 
be melted in a hundredth part of a second, and that 
it would not cause as much “sissing” as a drop of 
water on a hot griddle. 

By this comparison we can realize that the sun is 
a big thing, and we can form some idea of what 
kind of a place it would be to pass the summer 
months. In contemplating the terrible heat of the 
sun, we are led to wonder why those whose duty it 
is to preach a hell hereafter, have not argued that 
the sun is the place where sinners will go to when 
they die. 

It is not our desire to inaugurate any reform in 
religious matters, but we realize what a discourag- 
ing thing it must be for preachers to preach hell and 
have nothing to show for it. As the business is now 
done, they are compelled to draw upon their imag- 
ination for a place of endless punishment, and a 


peck’s sunshine. 


great many people, who would be frightened out of 
their boots if the minister could show them hell as 
he sees it, look upon his talk as a sort of dime novel 
romance. 

They want something tangible on which they can 
base their belief, and while the ministers do every- 
thing in their power to encourage sinners by pictur- 
ing to them the lake of fire and brimstone, where 
boat-riding is out of the question unless you paddle 
around in a cauldron kettle, it seems as though their 
labors would be lightened if they could point to the 
sun, on a hot day in August, and say to the wicked 
man that unless he gets down on his knees and says 
his now I lay me, and repents, and is sprinkled, 
and chips in pretty flush towards the running ex- 
penses of the church, and stands his assessments 
like a thoroughbred, that he will wake up some 
morning, and find himself in the sun, blistered from 
Genesis to Revelations, thirsty as a harvest hand 
and not a brewery within a million miles, begging 
for a zinc ulster to cool his parched hind legs. 

Such an argument, with an illustration right on 
the blackboard of the sky, in plain sight, would 
strike terror to the sinner, and he would want to 
come into the fold too quick. What the religion of 
this country wants, to make it take the cake, is a 
hell that the wayfaring man, though a democrat or 
a greenbacker, can see with the naked eye. The 
way it is now, the sinner, if he wants to find out 
anything about the hereafter, has to take it second 
handed, from some minister or deacon who has not 
seen it himself, but has got his idea of it from some 
other fellow who maybe dreamed it out. 


38 


PECK S SUNSHINE. 


Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox 
hell, and the sinner does not know whether to be- 
lieve him or not. The deacon may have lied to the 
sinner some time in a horse trade, or in selling him 
goods, and beat him, and how does he know but the 
same deacon is playing a brace game on him on the 
hereafter, or playing him for a sardine. 

Now, if the people who advance these ideas of 
heaven or hell, had a license to point to the moon, 
the nice, cool moon, as heaven, which would be 
plausible, to say the least, and say that it was 
heaven, and prove it, and could prove that the sun 
was the other place,, which looks reasonable, accord- 
ing to all we have heard about Tother place, the 
moon would be so full there would not be standing 
room, and they would have to turn republicans 
away, while the sun would be playing to empty 
benches, and there would only be a tew editors there 
who got in on passes. 

Of course, during a cold winter, when the ther- 
mometer was forty or fifty degrees below zero, and 
everybody was blocked in, and coal was up to seven- 
teen dollars a ton, the cause of religion would not 
prosper as much as it would in summer, because 
when you talked to a sinner about leading a differ- 
ent life or he would go to the sun, he would look at 
his coal pile and say that he didn’t care a continental 
how soon he got there, but these discouragements 
would not be any greater than some that the truly 
good people have to contend with now, and the 
average the year round would be largely in favor of 
going to the moon. 

The moon is very popular now, even, and if it is 
properly advertised as a celestial paradise, where 


peck’s sunshine. 


only good people could get their work in, and where 
the wicked could not enter on any terms, there 
would be a great desire to take the straight and nar- 
row way to the moon, and the path to the wicked 
sun would be grown over with sand burs, and 
scorched with lava, and few would care to take pas- 
sage by that route. Anyway, this thing is worth 
looking into. 

UNSCREWING THE TOP OF A FRUIT JAR. 

There is one thing that there should be a law 
passed about, and that is, these glass fruit jars, with 
a top that screws on. It should be made a criminal 
offense, punishable with death or banishment to 
Chicago, for a person to manufacture a fruit jar, for 
preserving fruit, with a top that screws on. Those 
jars look nice when the fruit is pufup in them, and 
the house-wife feels as though she was repaid for 
all her perspiration over a hot stove, as she looks at 
the glass jars of different berries, on the shelf in the 
cellar. 

The trouble does not begin until she has company, 
and decides to tap a little of her choice fruit. After 
the supper is well under way, she sends for a jar, 
and tells the servant to unscrew the top, and pour 
the fruit into a dish. The girl brings it into the 
kitchen, and proceeds to unscrew the top. She works 
gently at first, then gets mad, wrenches at it, sprains 
her wrist, and begins to cry, with her nose on the 
underside of her apron, and skins her nose on the 
dried pancake batter that is hidden in the folds of 
the apron. 


40 


peck’s sunshine. 


Then the little house- wife takes hold of the fruit 
can, smilingly, and says she will show the girl how 
to take off the top. She sits down on the wood-box, 
takes the glass jar between her knees, runs out her 
tongue, and twists. But the cover does not twist. 
The cover seems to feel as though it was placed 
there to keep guard over that fruit, and it is as im- 
movable as the Egyptian pyramids. The little lady 
works until she is red in the face, and until her 
crimps all come down, and then she sets it away 
to wait for the old liian to come home. He comes in 
tired, disgusted, and mad as a hornet, and when the 
case is laid before him, he goes out in the kitchen, 
pulls off his coat, and takes the jar. 

He remarks that he is at a loss to know what wo- 
men are made for, anyway. He says they are all 
right to sit around and do crochet work, but when 
strategy, brain, and muscle are require^, then they 
can’t get along without a man. He tries to unscrew 
the cover, and his thumb slips off and knocks the 
skin oft* the knuckle. He breathes a silent prayer 
and calls for the kerosene can, and pours a little oil 
into the crevice, and lets ft soak, and then he tries 
again, and swears audibly. 

Then he calls for a tack -hammer, and taps the 
cover gently on one side, the glass jar breaks, and 
the juice runs down his trousers leg, on the table 
and all around. Enough of the fruit is saved for 
supper, and the old man goes up the back stairs to 
tie his thumb up in a rag, and change his pants. 

All come to the table smiling, as though nothing 
had happened, and the house-wife don’t allow any 
of the family to have any sauce for fear they will 
get broken glass into their stomachs, but the ‘^com- 


peck's sunshine. 


41 


pany ” is provided for generously, auJ all would be 
well only for a remark of a little boy who, when 
asked if he will have some mor j of the sauce, says 
he don’t want no strawbi^rries pickled in kerosene.” 
The smiling little hostess steals a smell of the sauce, 
while they are discussing politics, and believes she 
does smell kerosene, and she looks at the old man 
kind of spunky, when he glances at the rag on his 
thumb and asks if there is no liniment in the house. 

The preserving of fruit in glass jars is broken up 
in that house and four dozen jars are down cellar 
to lay upon the lady’s mind till she gets a chance to 
send some of them to a charity picnic. The glass 
jar fruit can business is played out unless a scheme 
can be invented to get the top off. 

BUTTERMILK BIBBERS. 

The immense consumption of buttermilk as a 
drink, retailed over the bars of saloons, has caused 
temperance people to rejoice. It is said that over 
two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. 
There is one thing about buttermilk, in its favor, 
and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the 
place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a 
quart of buttermilk, and while he may feel like a 
calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in'a 
fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run 
around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated 
and throw a beer keg through a saloon window. 

Another thing, buttermilk does not cau^e the nose 
to become red, and the consumer’s breath does not 
smell like the next day after a sangerfest. The 
complexion of the nose of a buttermilk drinker as- 


42 


peck’s sunshine. 


sumes a pale hue which is enchanting, and while 
his breath may smell like a baby that has nursed 
too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his 
entrance to a temperance society. 

AN iESTHETIC FEMALE CLUB BUSTED. 

The organization of the Cosmos ” Club, of Chi- 
cago women, for the purpose of discussing ‘‘aesthetic” 
business, ancient poetry and pottery ware, calls to 
mind the attempt to organize such a club here in 
Milwaukee. Our people here are too utterly full of 
business and domestic affairs to take to the 
“aesthetic” very generally, and the lady from Bos- 
ton who tried to get up a class in the new wrinkle 
went away considerably disgusted. She called about 
fifty of our splendidest ladies together at the resi- 
dence of one of them, and told them what the ladies 
of Eastern cities were doing in the study of higher 
arts. She elaborated considerably on the study of 
Norwegian literature, ceraniics, bric-a-brac and so 
forth, and asked for an expression of the ladies pres- 
ent. One lady said she was willing to go into any- 
thing that would tend to elevate the tone of society, 
and make women better qualified for helpmates to 
their husbands, but she didn’t want any Norwegian 
literature in hers. She said her husband ran for an 
office once and the whole gang of Norwegian voters 
went back on him and he was everlastingly scooped. 

The Boston lady held up her hands in holy hor- 
ror, and was going to explain to the speaker how 
she was off her base, when another lady got up and 
said she wanted to take the full course or nothing. 
She wanted to be posted in ancient literature and 


peck’s sunshine. 


43 


ceramics. She had studied ceramics some already, 
and had got a good deal of information. She had 
found that in case of whooping cough, goose oil 
rubbed on the throat and lungs was just as good as 
it was in case of croup, and she felt that with a 
good teacher any lady would learn much that would 
be of incalculable value, and she, for one, was going 
for the whole hog or none. 

The Boston lady saved herself from fainting by 
fanning herself vigorously, and was about to show 
the two ladies that they had a wrong idea of 
aesthetics, when a lady from the West Side, who 
had just been married, got up and said she felt that 
we were all too ignorant of aesthetics, and they 
should take every opportunity to become better in- 
formed. She said when she first went to keeping 
house she couldn’t tell baking powder that had alum 
in it from the pure article, and she had nearly 
ruined her husband’s stomach before she learned 
anything. And speaking of bric-a-brac, she felt 
ghat every lady should learn to economize, by occa- 
sionally serving a picked up dinner, of bric-a-brac 
that would otherwise be wasted. 

The Boston lady found she could not speak un- 
d^erstandingly, so she left her chair and went around 
to the different groups of ladies, who were talking 
earnestly, ta get them interested. The first group 
of four that she broke in on were talking of the best 
way to renovate seal-skin cloaks that had been 
moth eaten. One lady said that she had tried all 
the aesthetic insect powder that was advertised in 
the papers, and the moths would fairly get fat on it, 
and beg for more; but last spring she found out 
that moths were afraid of whisky. 


44 


peck’s sunshine. 


Her husband worked in a wholesale whisky st(5<yj, 
and his garments became saturated with the per- 
fume, and you couldn’t hire a moth to go near him, 
So she got an empty whisky barrel and put in ah 
her furs, and the moths never touched a thing. But 
she said the moths had a high old time all summer. 
They would get together in squads and ^ go to the 
barrel and smell at the bung-hole, and lock arms 
and sashay around the room, staggering just as 
though there was an election, and about eleven 
o’clock they would walk up to a red spot in the car- 
pet and take a lunch, just like men going to a sa- 
loon. 

She said there was one drawback to the whisky 
barrel, as it gave her away when she first went out 
in company after taking her clothes out of the bar- 
rel. She wore her seal-skin cloak to the Good Tem- 
plars’ Lodge, the first night after taking it out, and 
they were going to turn her out of the Lodge on the 
ground that she had violated her obligation. 

“ You may talk about your Scandinavian litera- 
ture,” said she, turning to the Boston lady, “but 
when it comes to keeping moths out of furs, an 
empty whisky barrel knocks the everlasting socks 
off of anything I ever tried.” 

The Boston lady put on her aesthetic hat, and was 
about to take her leave, satisfied that she had struck 
the wrong crowd, when a sweet little woman, with 
pouting lips, called her aside. The Boston lady 
thought she had found at last one cbngenial soul, 
and she said : 

“ What is it, my dear ?” 

The little lady hesitated a moment, and with a 
tear in her eye she asked : 


peck’s sunshine. 


45 


‘‘Madam, can you tell me what is good for worms? 
Fido has acted for a week as though he. was ill, 
and ” 

That settled it. The Boston lady went away, and 
has never been heard of since. 


“A YOUNG fellow and his girl went out sleighing 
yesterday, and the lad returned with a frozen ear. 
There is nothing very startling in the simple fact 
of a frozen ear, but the idea is that it was the ear 
next to the girl that he was foolish enough to let 
freeze.” 

A girl that will go out sleigh-riding with a young 
man and allow his ears to freeze, is no gentleman, 
and ought to be arrested. Why, here in Milwaukee, 
on the coldest days, we have seen a young man out 
riding with a girl, and his ears were so hot they 
would fairly “sis,” and there was not a man driving 
on the avenue but would have changed places with 
the young man, and allowed his ears to cool. Girls 
cannot sit • too close during this weather. The cli- 
mate is rigorous. 

FOOLING WITH THE BIBLE. 

Reports from the stationers show that there is no 
demand at all for the revised edition of the Bible, 
and had it not been for the newspapers publishing 
the whole affair there would have been very few 
persons that took the trouble to even glance at it, 
and it is believed that not one reader of the daily 
papers in a hundred read any of the Bible, and not 
one in ten thousand read all of it which was pub- 


46 


peck’s sunshine. 


lished. - Who originated this scheme of revising t'.hr) 
Bible we do not know, but whoever it was made a 
miscue. There was no one suffering particularly for 
a revision of the Bible. It was good enough as it 
was. No literary sharp of the present day has got 
any license to change anything in the Bible. 

Why, the cheeky ghouls have actually altered 
over the Lord’s Prayer, cut it biased, and thrown 
the parts about giving us this day our daily bread 
into the rag bag. How do they know that the Lord 
said more than he wanted to in that prayer? He 
wanted that daily bread in there, or He never would 
have put it in. The only wonder is that those re- 
visers did not insert strawberry shortcake and ice 
cream in place of daily bread. Some of these min- 
isters who are writing speeches for the Lord think 
they are smart. They have fooled with Christ’s 
Sermon on the Mount until He couldn’t tell it if He 
was to meet it in the Chicago Times. 

This thing has gone on long enough, and we want 
a stop put to it. We have kept still about the piracy 
that has been going on in the Bible because people 
who are better than we are have seemed to endorse 
it, but now we are sick of it, and if there is going to 
be an annual clerical picnic to cut gashes in the 
Bible and stick new precepts and examples on where 
they will do the most hurt, we shall lock up our 
old Bible where the critters can’t get at it, and 
throw the first book agent down stairs head first 
that tries to shove off on to us one of these new tan- 
gled, go-as-you-please Bibles, with all the modern 
improvements, and hell left out. 

Now, where was there a popular demand to have 
hell left out of the Bible ? Were there any petitions 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


4 ^ 


from the people sent up to this self-constituted leg- 
islature of pinchbeck ministers, praying to have hell 
abolished, and ‘‘hades” inserted? Not a petition. 
And what is this hades? Where is it? Nobody 
knows. They have taken away our orthodox hell, 
that has stood by us since we first went to Sunday 
school, and given us a hades. Half of us wouldn’t 
know a hades if we should see it dead in the road, 
but they couldn’t fool us any on hell. 

No, these revisers have done more harm to relig- 
ion than they could have done by preaching all their 
lives. They have opened the ball, and now, every 
time a second-class dominie gets out of a job, he is 
going to cut and slash into the Bible. He will think 
up lots of things that will sound better than some 
things that are in there, and by and by we shall 
have our Bibles as we do our almanacs, annually, 
with weather probabilities on the margins. 

This is all wrong. Infidels will laugh at us, and 
say our old Bible is worn out, and out of style, and 
tell us to have our measure taken for a new one ev- 
ery fall and spring, as we do for our clothes. If this 
revision is a good thing, why won’t another one be 
better ? The woods are full of preachers who think 
they could go to work and improve the Bible, and if 
we don’t shut down on this thing, they will take a 
hand in it. If a man hauls down the American flag, 
we shoot him on the spot ; and now we suggest that 
if any man mutilates the Bible, we run an umbrella 
into him and spread it. 

The old Bible just filled the bill, and we hope 
every new one that is printed will lay on the shelves 
and get sour. This revision of the Bible is believed 
to be the work of an incendiary. It is a scheme got 


48 


peck’s sunshine. 


up by British book publishers to make money out of 
pious people. It is on the same principle that spec- 
ulators get up a corner on pork or wheat. They got 
revision, and printed Bibles enough to supply the 
world, and would not let out one for love or money. 
None were genuine unless the name of this British 
firm was blown in the bottle. 

Millions of Bibles were shipped to this country by 
the firm that was “long” on Bibles, and they were 
to be thrown on the market suddenly, after being 
locked up and guarded by the police until the peo- 
ple were made hungry for Bibles. 

The edition was advertised like a circus, and doors 
were to be opened at six o’clock in the morning. 
American publishers who wanted to publish the 
Bible, too, got compositors ready to rush out a cheap 
Bible within twelve hours, and the Britons, who 
were running the corner on the Word of God, called 
these American publishers pirates. The idea of men 
being pirates for printing a Bible, which should be 
as free as salvation. The newspapers that had the 
Bibles telegraphed to them from the east, were also 
pirates. 

O, the revision is a three-card monte speculation; 
that is all it is. 

A PECK AT THE CHEESE. 

Geo. W. Peck, of the Sun, recently delivered an 
address before the Wisconsin State Dairyman’s As- 
sociation. The following is an extract from the 
document: 

Fellow creamationists : In calling upon me, on 
this occasion, to enlighten you upon a subject that 


peck’s sunshine. 


49 


is dear to the hearts of all Americans, you have got 
the right man in the right place. It makes me proud 
to come to my old home and unfold truths that have 
been folded since I can remember. It may be said 
by scoffers, and it has been said to-day, in my pres- 
ence, that I didn’t know enough to even milk a cow. 
I deny the allegation; show me the allegator. If 
any gentleman present has got a cow here with him, 
and I can borrow a clothes-wringer, I will show you 
whether I can milk a cow or not. Or, if there is a 
cheese mine here handy, I will demonstrate that I 
can — runnet. 

The manufacture of cheese and butter has been 
among the earliest industries. Away back in the 
history of the world, we find Adam and Eve convey- 
ing their milk from the garden of Eden, in a one- 
horse wagon to the cool spring cheese factory, to be 
weighed in the balance. Whatever may be said of 
Adam and Eve to their discredit in the marketing 
of the products of their orchard, it has never been 
charged that they stopped at the pump and put 
water in their milk cans. Doubtless you all remem- 
ber how Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel 
would not let him do the churning. We can picture 
Cain and Abel driving mooly cows up to the house 
from the pasture in the southeast corner of the gar- 
den, and Adam standing at the bars with a tin pail 
and a three-legged stool, smoking a meerschaum 
pipe and singing '‘Hold the fort for I am coming 
through the rye,” while Eve sat on the verandah 
altering over her last year’s polonaise, and winking 
at the devil who stood behind the milk house sing- 
ing, ‘T want to be an angel.” After he got through 


50 PECK^S SUNSHINE. 

milking he came up and saw Eve blushing, and he 
said, ‘‘Madame, cheese it,’’ and she chose it. 

But to come down to the present day, we find that 
cheese has become one of the most important 
branches of manufacture. It is next in importance 
to the silver interest. And, fellow cheese mongers, 
you are doing yourselves great injustice that you do 
not petition congress to pass a bill to remonetize 
cheese. There is more cheese raised in this country 
than there is silver, and it is more valuable. Sup- 
pose you had not eaten a mouthful in thirty days, 
and you should have placed on the table before you 
ten dollars stamped out of silver bullion on one plate 
and nine dollars stamped out of cheese bullion on 
another plate. Which would you take first? Though 
the face value of the nine cheese dollars would be 
ten per cent, below the face value of ten silver dol- 
lars, you would take the cheese. You could use it to 
better advantage in your business. Hence I say 
cheese is more valuable than silver, and it should 
be made legal tender for all debts, public and pri- 
vate, except pew rent. I may be in advance of 
other eminent financiers, who have studied the cur- 
rency question, but I want to see the time come, and 
I trust the day is not far distant, when 412^ grains 
of cheese will be equal to a dollar in codfish, and 
when the merry jingle of slices of cheese shall be 
heard in every pocket. 

Then every cheese factory can make its own coin, 
money will be plenty, everybody will be happy, and 
there never will be any more war. It may be asked 
how this currency can be redeemed? I would have 
an incontrovertible bond, made of Limburger cheese, 
which is stronger and more durable. When this 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


51 


done you can tell the rich from the poor man by the 
smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not 
even get a smell of money, but in the good days 
which are coming the gentle zephyr will waft to us 
the able-bodied Limburger, and we shall know that 
money is plenty. 

The manufacture of cheese is a business that a 
poor man can engage in as well as a rich man. I 
say it, without fear of successful contradiction, and 
say it boldly, that a poor man with, say 200 cows, if 
he thoroughly understands his business, can market 
more cheese than a rich man who owns 300 oxen. 
This is susceptible of demonstration. If my boy 
showed a desire to become a statesman, I would say 
to him, Young man, get married, buy a mooley 
cow, go to Sheboygan county, and start a cheese 
factory.” 

Speaking of cows, did it ever occur to you, gentle- 
men, what a saving it would be to you if you should 
adopt mooley cows instead of horned cattle? It takes 
at least three tons of hay and a large quantity of 
ground feed annually to keep a pair of horns fat, 
and what earthly use are they? Statistics show that 
there are annually killed 45,000 grangers by cattle 
with horns. You pass laws to muzzle dogs, because 
one in ten thousand goes mad, and yet more people 
are killed by cattle horns than by dogs. What the 
country needs is more mooley cows. 

Now that I am on the subject, it may be asked 
what is the best paying breed for the dairy. My 
opinion is divided between the south down and the 
cochin china. Some like one the best and some the 
other, but as for me, give ma liberty or give me 
death 




62 


peck’s sunshine, 


There are many reforms that should be inaugu- 
rated in the manufacture of cheese. Why should 
cheese be made round? I am inclined to the belief 
that the making of cheese round is a superstition. 
Who had not rather buy a good square piece of 
cheese, than a wedge-shape chunk, all rind at one 
end, and as thin as a Congressman’s excuse for 
voting back pay at the other? Make your cheese 
square and the consumer will rise up and call you 
another. 

Another reform that might be inaugurated would 
be to veneer the cheese with building paper or clap- 
boards, instead of the time-honored piece of towel. I 
never saw cheese cut that I didn’t think that the 
cloth around it had seen service as a bandage on 
some other patient. But I may have been wrong, 
j^nother thing that does not seem to be right, is to 
see so many holes in cheese. It seems to me that 
solid cheese, one made by one of the old masters, 
with no holes in it — I do not accuse you of cheat- 
ing, but don’t you feel a little ashamed when you 
see a cheese cut, and the holes are the biggest part 
of it? The little cells may be handy for the skipper, 
but the consumer feels the fraud in his innermost 
soul. 

Among the improvements made in the manufac- 
ture of cheese I must not forget that of late years 
the cheese does not resemble the grindstone as much 
as it did years ago. The time has been when, if the 
farmer could not find his grindstone, all he had to 
do was to mortise a hole in the middle of a cheese, 
and turn it and grind his scythe. Before the inven- 
tion of nitro-glycerine, it was a good day’s work to 
hew off cheese enough for a meal. Time has worked 
wonders in cheese.^. 


S STJNSHINB, 

COSiOilED CONOEBT THOXJP^ES. 

Sometimes it seems as though the colored people 
ought to have a guardian appointed over them. 
Now, you take a colored concert troupe, and though 
they may have splendid voices, they do not know 
enough to take advantage of their opportunities. 
People go to hear them because they are colored 
people, and they^want to hear old-fashioned negro 
melodies, and yet these mokes will tackle Italian 
opera and high toned music that they don’t know 
how to sing. 

They will sing these fancy operas, and people will 
not pay any attention. Along toward the end of 
the programme they will sing some old nigger song, 
and the house fairly goes wild and calls them out 
half a dozen times. And yet they do not know 
enough to make up a programme of such music as 
they can sing, and such as the audience want. 

They get too big, these colored people do, and 
can’t strike their level. People who have heard Kel- 
logg, and Marie Eoze, and Gerster, are sick when a 
black cat with a long red dress comes out and mur- 
ders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. 
We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from 
some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and 
screech, and catch her breath and come again, and 
wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery 
and take a new position, and unlimber and send 
volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the au- 
dience, and then she would catch on to the highest 
note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a 
root, till you would think they would have to throw 
/a pail of water on her to make her let go, and all the 
time she would be biting and shaking like a terrier 
with a rat, and final^ g^e^ne kick at her red trail 


54 


deck’s sunshine. 


with her hind foot, and back off the stage looking 
as though she would have to be carried on a dust- 
pan, and the people in the audience would look at 
each other in pity and never give her a cheer, when, 
if she had come out and patted her leg, and put one 
hand up to her ear, and sung, ‘‘ Ise a Gwine to See 
Massa Jesus Early in de Homin’,” they would have 
split the air wide open with cheers, and called her 
out five times. 

The fact is, they haven’t got sense. 

There was a hungry-lookmg, round-shouldered, 
sick-looking colored man in that same party, that 
was on the programme for a violin solo. When he 
came out the people looked at each other, as much 
as to say, ‘‘Now we will have some fun.” The moke 
struck an attitude as near Ole Bull as he could with 
his number eleven feet and his hollow chest, and 
played some diabolical selection from a foreign cat 
opera that would have been splendid if Wilhelmjor 
Ole Bull had played it, but the colored brother 
couldn’t get within a mile of the tune. He rasped 
his old violin for twenty minutes and tried^to look 
grand, and closed his eyes and seemed to soar away 
to heaven, — and the audience wished to heaven he 
had, — and when he became exhausted and squeezed 
the last note out, and the audience saw that he was 
in a profuse perspiration, they let him go and did 
not call him back. If he had come out and sat on 
the back of a chair and sawed off “The Devil’s 
Dream,” or “ The Arkansaw Traveler,” that crowd 
would have cheered him till he thought he was a 
bigger man than Grant. 

But didn’t have any sens®. 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


55 


If some one will send a marked copy of this paper 
to some of these colored concert troupes, and they 
will take the hint, and sing nigger songs, they will 
make a heap of money, where now they have to live 
on a free lunch route. 

COULDN’T GET AWAY FROM HIM. 

A GOOD many may have wondered why we so sud- 
denly quit speeding our horse on the avenue. For 
two or three days we couldn’t go down the avenue 
enough, and there is no person but will admit that 
our old pile driver trotted real spry. We did not get 
the idea that he was the fastest horse that ever w’aB, 
but he seemed real soon. It takes a good deal of 
executive ability for u man who has a third-class 
horse to keep from going down the road with horses 
that are too fast. One must be a good judge, and 
when he finds a horse that he can beat, stick to 
him. 

We got the thing down pretty fine, but one day a 
man drove along beside us, going up, who seemed 
bound to get into conversation. He was a red -faced 
man, with these side-bar whiskers, evidently a Ger- 
man. He was driving a sorrel horse to a long sled, 
with a box on behind the seat, a sort of delivery 
sleigh. He had a barrel in the sleigh, filled with in- 
testines from a slaughter house, two baskets full of 
the same freight, a cow’s head, and two sheep heads. 
He was evidently owner of a sausage factory some- 
where, and as he kept along beside us his company 
was somewhat annoying. Not that we were proud, 
but we feared the people on the avenue would think 


peck’s sunshine. 


as 

we were a silent partner in a sausage factory, and 
that we were talking business. 

The man was real entertaining in his conversa- 
tion, but the load he had was not congenial, and we 
were glad when the foot of the hill was reached, so 
we could turn around and go down, and get away 
from him. We turned and spit on our hands, and 
V^gun to pull up on the old horse, and he began to 



“NICE RACE, ain’t IT, MR. BECK?” 

get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about 
the sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air 
making every nerve get up and git. 

Suddenly the nose of a sorrel horse began to work 
up by where we sat, and we looked around, and may 
we never live to make a million dollars if it wasn’t 
the red-faced sausage man, intestines, cow’s head, 


peck’s sunshine. 


67 


basket and all, and his old horse was coming for all 
that was out. We blush for our sex. It would look 
nice to get in the papers that we had been racing 
our blue-Dlooded thoroughbred against a sausage 
butcher, wouldn’t it? Our plan was formed in an 
instant. Great generals form plans suddenly, and 
we took out the whip and touched our horse on a 
raw spot, intending to go right away from the ferti- 
lizer. 

The horse seemed to smell the load behind him, 
and to have his pride touched, for he snorted and 
let out another link. We don’t know as anyone 
would believe it, but the faster our beautiful and 
costly steed went, the faster that homely and cheap 
butcher horse climbed. People by the hundreds all 
along the line were watching the race. The baskets 
of sausage covers were slewing around from one 
side of his sled to the other, and we expected every 
moment one of them would flop over into our cutter. 

Matters were becoming desperate, and we gave 
the horse one more cut and went the last block at a 
fearful rate, but the butcher was right beside us, 
so one mosquito bar would have covered us, and we 
came out neck and neck, the Dutchman a little 
ahead because his horse was unchecked, and the 
crowd yelled for the butcher. We turned to go up, 
when the butcher came up alongside just as a car- 
riage of beautiful ladies were passing, and as they 
turned up their noses at his load, he said: 

Dot vas a nice race, ain’t it, Mister Beck?” 

We could have killed him in cold blood. ITot that 
we dislike to be beaten- We have always been 
beaten. It isn’t that. But we’ ^don’t want to trot 
horses with no delivery wagon. We are not calcu- 


58 


peck’s sunshine. 


lated for associating, in the horse arena, with a load 
of slaughter house refuse. It is asking too much. 
We are willing to race with Deacon Van Schaick, 
or brother Antisdel, or Elder Hyde, or Elder Gor- 
don, or any of those truly good men in whom there 
is no guile, and in whose cutters there is no foreign 
matter, but as long as reason maintains her throne 
we shall never go upon the track again with a 
butcher. 

There should be a law passed making it a penal 
offence for a person with a delivery wagon to tackle 
onto a man who drives a thoroughbred. It is wrong, 
and will lead to trouble. We have not given up 
racing entirely, but hereafter we shall look the ave- 
nue over very close for butchers before we let out 
our four -legged telescope. A butcher is just as gcod 
as anybody, understand us, but they must keep 
their distance. We don’t want to look into the hind 
end of no cutter that is filled with slaughter house 
ornaments, and we won’t. It is not pride of birth, 
or anything of that kind, but such people ought to 
drive on Wells street, or have slower horses. 

DOGS AND HUMAN BEINGS. 

Lorillard, the Hew York tobacco man, had a poo- 
dle dog stolen, and has offered a reward of five hun- 
dred dollars for the arrest of the thief, and he in- 
forms a reporter that he will spend $10,000, if neces- 
sary, for the capture and conviction of the thief. 
[Applause.] 

The applause marked in there will be from human 
skye terriers, who have forgotten that only a few 
w^ks ago several hundred girls, who had been 


peck’s sunshine. 


59 


working in Lorillard’s factory, went on a strike be- 
cause, as they allege, they were treated like dogs. 
We doubt if they were treated as well as this poodle 
was treated. We doubt, in case one of these poor, 
virtuous girls was kidnapped, if the great Lorillard 
would have offered as big a reward for the convic- 
tion of the human thief, as he has for the conviction 
of the person who has eloped with his poodle. 

We hope that the aristocracy of this country will 
never get to valuing a dog higher than it does a hu- 
man being. When it gets so that a rich person 
would not permit a poodle to do the work in a to- 
bacco factory that a poor girl does to support a sick 
mother, hell had better be opened for summer board- 
ers. When girls w^ork ten hours a day stripping 
nasty tobacco, and find at the end of the week that 
the fines for speaking are larger than the wages, 
and the fines go for the conviction of thieves who 
steal the girls’ master’s dog, no one need come 
around here lecturing at a dollar a head and filing 
us there is no hell. 

When a poor girl, who has gone creeping to her 
work at daylight, looks out of the window at noon 
to see her master’s carriage go by, in which there is a 
five hundred dollar dog with a hundred dollar blanket 
on, and a collar set with diamonds, lolling on satin 
cushions, and the girl is fined ten cents for looking 
out of the window, you don’t want to fool away any 
time trying to get us to go to a heaven where such 
heartless employers are expected. 

It is seldom the Sun gets on its ear, but it can say 
with great fervency, ‘‘Damn a man that will work 
poor girls like slaves, and pay them next to noth- 
ing, and spend ten tho^s^d dollars to catch a dog- 


60 


peck’s sunshine. 


thief !” If these sentiments are sinful, and for ex. 
pressing them we are a candidate for fire and brim- 
stone, it is all right, and the devil can stoke up and 
make up our bunk when he hears that we are on the 
through train. 

It seems now — though we may change our mind 
the first day at the fire— as though we had rather 
be in hades with a hundred million people who have 
always done the square thing, than to be in any 
heaven that will pass a man in who has starved the 
poor and paid ten thousand dollars to catch a dog- 
thief. We could have a confounded sight better 
time, even if we had our ulster all burned off. It 
would be worth the price of admission to stand with 
our back to the fire, and as we began to smell wool- 
en burning near the pistol pocket, to make up faces 
at the ten-thousand-dollar-dog millionaires that were 
putting on style at the other place. 


Andrews’ Bazar says: ‘^Gathered waists are 
very much worn.” 

If the men would gather the waists carefully and 
not squeeze so like blazes, they would not be worn 
so much. Some men go to work gathering a waist 
just as they would go to work washing sheep, or 
raking and binding. They ought to gather as 
though it was eggs done up in a funnel-shaped 
brown paper at a grocery. 


The Black River Falls Independent says : ‘‘If you 
have any old pants to give to the poor, take or send 
them to thje Ladies’ Relief Society.” 


peck’s sunshine. 


Well, we have got plenty of them ; but, bless you, 
we doubt if any member of the Ladies’ Relief Soci- 
sty could wear them. They don’t hook up. 

AETHUR WILL KEEP A COW. 

It is announced by telegraph from Washing- 
ton that Gen. Arthur will keep a cow at the White 
House during his term, to furnish milk for the 
family, rather than be obliged to depend upon a 
milk man who is in the habit of selling a mixed 
drink, though the customers prefer to take it 
straight. There is nothing that will do more to con- 
vince people of the true simplicity of a President 
than for him to keep a cow. No man who habitu- 
ally associates with a cow, and stirs up a bran mash, 
and watches her plow her nose down to the bottom 
in search of a potato paring, can be wholly bad. If 
the President selects a good, honest cow we have no 
fears that he will be a tyrant in his administration 
of affairs. A man is very apt to absorb many of 
the characteristics and traits of the cow that he 
milks. If she is a good natured, honest, law abid- 
ing cow, that '‘hoists” at the word of command, 
stands firm and immovable while being milked, and 
"gives down” freely, so that the fingers are not 
cramped, and she does not switch her tail in the face 
of the milker, the man will be a good natured, gen- 
erous, honest man, but if the cow is one of those 
communists, and has to be tied to the manger, and 
you have to hold one leg to keep her from kicking 
over the pail, and she tries to run a horn into you, 


peck’s sunshine. 


are unstrung for fear she is thinking of some devih 
try to play on you, the man whose duty it is to draw 
the milk from her udder will become harsh, suspi- 
cious, cruel, tricky, and mean; and he will grind the 
face of the poor. 

The country will hope that Mr. Arthur, in select- 
ing a cow, will use more judgment than in selecting 
a cabinet, and will bring his great mind to bear on 
the subject as though he appreciated the situation. 
We trust he will not buy a cow of a democrat. 
There may be good cows owned by democrats, but 
they are not for sale, and a democrat would sell him 
a kicking cow that was farrow, just to injure his 
administration. Let him go to some friend in his 
own party, some man who is interested in the suc- 
cess of his administration, and state his case, and if 
possible get a cow on trial. 

This policy is wise from the fact that he could 
thus see if the cow was going to hold out as a good 
milker. Some cows give a good mess of milk when 
they first go to a new place, but in a week they let 
down and the first thing you know they dry up en- 
tirely. Mr. Arthur wants to look out for this. The 
country is full of bold, bad men, who would palm off 
a kicking cow, or one that was not_a stayer, onto 
their best friends. 

Another thing, we would advise Mr. Arthur not 
to use a milking stool with one leg, but to get one 
with three legs. It is undignified in any man to 
stretch out on a barn floor, with a one-legged milk 
stool kicking him in the pistol pocket, a pail of milk 
distributing itself over his person, and a frightened 
cow backed up in a stall threatening to hook his 
daylights out, and it would be more undignified in 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


63 


a President of the United States. Get a three-legged 
stool, by all means, or use an empty soap box to sit 



If all this unsolicited but well-meant advice is 
taken, the country will be in no danger from 
Arthur’s decision to keep a cow, and we shall hope 
t(? see him on some fine morning next summer, as 
the sun is tingeing the eastern horizon with its 
golden beams, and the 
songs of birds float over 
the Capitol at Washing- 
ton — driving his cow to 
pasture down by the 
Potomac, singing mer- 


AWTHim’S cow. 


rily as he slaps her on the rump with a piece of bar- 
rel stave, or we will accept an invitation to visit his 
barn and show him how to mix a bran mash that 
will wake to ecstacy. the aforesaid cow, and cause 
her milk to flow like back-pay from the treasury. 


u 


peck’s sunshine. 


When it comes to cows we deserve a cabinet posh 
tion. 

SHALL THERE BE HUGGING IN THE PARKS P 

The law-abiding people of this community were 
stai-tled on Tuesday, and the greatest indignation 
prevailed at an editorial article in the Sentinel de- 
nouncing the practice of hugging in the public 
parks. The article went on to show that the placing 
of seats in the parks leads to hugging, and the edit- 
or denounced hugging in the most insane manner 
possible. 

The Sun does not desire to enter politics, but when 
a great constitutional question like this comes up, it 
will be found on the side of the weak against the 
strong. 

The Sentinel advises the removal of the seats from 
the park because hugging is done on them. Great 
heavens ! has it come to this ? Are the dearest 
rights of the American citizen to be abridged in this 
summary manner ? Let us call the attention of that 
powerful paper to a clause in the Declaration of In- 
dependence, which asserts that ‘‘all men are created 
free and equal, endowed with certain inalienable 
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness.” When the framers of that great 
Declaration of Independence were at work on that 
clause, they must have had in view the pastime of 
hugging in the parks. 

Hugging is certainly a “pursuit of happiness.” 
People do not hug for wages — that is, except on the 
stage. Nobody is obliged to hug. It is a sort of 
spontaneous combustion, as it were, of the feelings^ 


peck's sunshine. 


65 


and has to have proper conditions of the atmosphere 
to make it a success. Parties who object to hug- 
ging are old, usually, ana have been satiated, and 
are like a lemon that has done duty in circus lem- 
onade. If they had a job of hugging, they would 
want to hire a man to do it for them. 

A man who objects to a little natural, soul-inspir- 
ing hugging on a back seat in a park, of an even- 
ing, with a fountain throwing water all over little 
cast-iron cupids, has probably got a soul, but he 
hasn't got it with him. To the student of nature 
there is no sight more beautiful than to see a flock 
of young people take seats in the park, after the 
sun has gone to bed in the west, and the moon has 
pulled a fleecy cloud over her face for a veil, so as 
not to disturb the worshipers. 

A couple, one a male and the other a female, will 
sit far apart on the cast-iron seat for a. moment, 
when the young lady will try to fix her cloak over 
her shoulders, and she can’t fix it, and then the 
young man will help her, and when he has got it 
fixed he will go off and leave one arm around the 
small of her back. He will miss his arm, and won- 
der where he left it, and go back after it, and in the 
dark he will feel around with the other hand to find 
the hand he left, and suddenly the two hands will 
meet ; they will express astonishment, and clasp 
each other, and be so glad that they will begin to 
squeeze, and the chances are that they will cut the 
girl in two, but they never do. Under such circum- 
stances, a girl can exist on less atmosphere than sha 
can when doing a washing. 

There is just about so much hugging that has to 
be done, and the Sentinel should remember that very 
5 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


many people have not facilities at their homes for 
such soul-stirring work, and they are obliged to flee 
to the parks, or to the woods, where the beneflcent 
city government has provided all of the modern im- 
provements. 

Hugging is as necessary to the youth of the land 
as medicine to the sick, and instead of old persons, 
whose days of kittenhood are over, throwing cold 
water upon the science of hugging, they should en- 
courage it by all legitimate means. 

When, in strolling through the parks, you run on 
to a case of sporadic hugging, instead of making a 
noise on the gravel walk, to cause the huggists to 
stop it, you should trace your steps noiselessly, get 
behind a tree, and see how long they can stand it 
without dying. Instead of removing the cast-iron 
seats from the parks, we should be in favor of fur- 
nishing reserved seats for old people, so they can sit 
and watch the hugging. 

It doesn’t do any hurt to hug. 

People think it is unhealthy, but nobody was ever 
known to catch cold while hugging. It is claimed 
by some that young people who stay out nights and 
hug, are not good for anything the next day. There 
is something to this, but if they didn’t get any hug- 
ging they wouldn’t be worth a cent any time. They 
would be all the time looking for it. 

No, good Mr. Sentinel , on behalf of fifty thousand 
young people who have no organ to make known 
their Wants, we ask you to stay your hand, and do 
not cause the seats to be removed from the parks. 
Remember how many there are who have yet to 
learn the noble art of hugging, and give them a 
chance. 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


67 


THE BOB-TAILED BADGER. 

The last legislature, having nothing else to do, 
passed a law providing for a change in the coat-of- 
arrns of the State. There was no change, particu- 
larly, except to move the plows and shovels around 
a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a 
new fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the 
rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner’s 
breeches into his boots a little further, and ampu- 
tate the tail of the badger. We do not care for the 
other changes, as they were only intended to give 
the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legiS' 
lature amputates the tail of the badger, the emblem 
of the democratic party, that crawls into a hole and 
pulls the hole in after him, it touches v,3 in our pa' 
triotism. 

The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, 
and though he resembles a skunk too much to b© 
very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tair 
and stick it up like a sore thumb. As it is now the 
new comer to our Garden of Eden will not know' 
whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier smelling in- 
to the archives of the State for a rat,<sor a defalc^» 
tion, or a sic semper Americanus scunch. We do r . 
complain tliat tne sailor with the Pinafore shirt on, 
on the new coat-of-arms,- is made to resemble Sena- 
tor Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator' 
Sawyer. These things are of minor importance, but 
jhe docking of that badger’s tail, and setting it up 
like a bob-tail horse, is an outrage upoij every citi- 
i^n of the State, and when the democrats get into 
power that tail shall be restored to its normal condi- 
tion if it takes all the blood and treasure in the State, 

28 


68 


peck’s sunshine. 


and this work of the republican incendiaries shall 
be undone. The idea of Wisconsin appearing among 
the galaxy of States with a bob-tailed badger is re- 
pugnant to all our finer feelings. 

CANNIBALS AND CORK LEGS. 

Great results are expected from an experiment 
recently tried by the American Missionary Society. 
Last fall they sent as missionary to the cannibal 
Islands a brother who had lost both arms and both 
legs in a railroad accident. He was provided with 
cork limbs, and his voice being in good condition it 
was believed he could get in his work with the 
heathen as well as though he was a whole man. 
The idea was to allow the cannibals to kill him and 
eat him, believing that the heathen would see the 
error of their ways and swear off on human flesh. 

A report has been received which is very encour- 
aging. It seems that the cannibals killed the good 
missionary, and cut off his arms and legs for a sort 
of stew, or “boyaw,”thus falling directly into the 
trap set for them by the missionary society. The 
missionary stationed at the next town, who fur- 
nishes the society with the data, says it was the 
most laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the 
heathen chew on those cork limbs. They boiled 
them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a go- 
as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, 
and giving a sacred concert about like our national 
“Whoop it up, Liza Jane,” and when they stuck a 
fork into the boiling limbs, and found that the 
“meat” seemed water soaked, they set the table and 
sounded the loud timbrel for breakfast. 


peck’s sunshine. 


69 


The surviving missionary says he shall never for- 
get the look of pain on the face of a buck cannibal 
as he bit into the elbow joint of the late lamented 
and struck a brass hinge. He picked it out as an 
American would pick a buckshot put of a piece of 
venison, and laid it beside his plate in an abstracted 
manner, and began to chew on the cork elbow. Any 
person who has ever tried to draw a cork out of a 
beer bottle with his teeth can realize the feelings of 
these cannibals as they tried to draw sustenance 
from the remains of the cork man. They were sad- 
dened, and it is safe to say they are incensed against 
the missionary society. 

Whether they will conclude that all Americans 
have become tough, and quit trying to masticate 
them, is not known, though that is the object sought 
to be attained by the society. One of the cannibals 
said he knew, when those legs and arms would not 
stay under water when they were boding, and had 
to be loaded down with stones, that the meat wasn’t 
right, but his wife told him ‘‘ some pork would bile 
so.” 

The experiment is worth following up, and we 
suppose hereafter there will be a great demand for 
men with cork arms and legs to be sent as mission- 
aries. After a few such experiences the cannibals 
may see the error of their ways and become Christ 
ians, and eat dog sausage and Limberg cheese. 

THE MINISTERIAL PUGILISTS. 

Those who read the account of the trial of ,ev. 
Carhart, at Oshkosh, are about as sick of true ood- 
ness as men can be. They open the ecclesit jstical 


70 


peck’s sunshine. 


court by singing A charge to keep I have,” and 
then Brother Haddock, after a prayer has been de- 
livered, does not keep his charges, but fires them at 
the presiding elder. Good old tunes are sung pre- 
vious to calling witnesses to testify to alleged three 
carde monte acts of a disciple of Christ. Sanctimo- 
nious looking men pray for divine guidance, and 
then try to prove that a dear brother has bilked an- 
other dear brother out of several hundred dollars on 
Texas lands, and that he tried to trade a wagon at 
double what it is worth to settle the matter. 

They sing," ‘‘ Take me just as I am,” and then tr^) 
to prove that the one who made charges against the 
other is not altogether holy, because he is alleged to 
have confessed to passing the night in a room with 
a female church member, in silent devotion, when 
he swears it is a lie, — that he only laid on a lounge. 

Prominent Methodists collect at the bull-fight ii\ 
Oshkosh, take sides with one or the other, and laj' 
their bottom prayer that their champion will come 
out on top, with not a stripe polluted nor a stai 
erased. 

One side sings, “ Jesus caugnt me when a stran- 
ger,” and the other side smiles and winks and whis^ 
pers that they are glad he was caught. 

They sing, “Rock of ages, cleft for me,” and pro- 
ceed to cleave the rock of each other’s character. 
They cast one eye heavenward in prayer, while with 
the other they watch the other side to see that they 
don’t steal the testimony. 

Some one starts “Little drops of water,” and big 
drops of perspiration appear on truly good foreheads 
for fear proof will be adduced to show that money 
has been obtained under false pretenses. 


peck’s sunshine. 


n 


And this goes by the name of religion ! 

There should be honor among ministers. Both of 
the principals in this suit should be bounced. If the 
charges are true, Carhart should emigrate. If they 
are not true, Haddock should emigrate. 

MUSIC ON THE WATERS. 

Our readers have no doubt noticed in the papers 
that the Goodrich Transportation Company had se- 
cured a band from Waupun to make music on the 
boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago 
this summer. Well, there is trouble going on in con- 
sequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich line, en- 
trusted the organization of the [band to Mr. Nick 
Jarvis, of Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation 
as a scientific pounder of the bass drum has received 
encomiums from the crowned heads of Oshkosh and 
Hazen’s cheese factory. 

Having such confidence in Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Hur- 
son gave him a roving commission, with authority 
to secure the best talent in the known world. He 
organized the band, and then it occurred to Mr. Jar- 
vis that the musicians had always been accustomed 
to playing on land, and they might be sick on the 
water, so he took measures to accustom them to a 
sea-faring life before leaving Waupun. He got 
them to practicing in a building, and hired some 
boys to throw water up on the side of the house, to 
see if they would be seasick. The band fellows 
would have stood the sea first-rate, unly the villains 
who had been hired to throw the water used a lot of 
dirty stuff they found back of a hotel, which smelled 
powerfuL 


72 


peck’s sunshine. 


A number of the band members felt the swash of 
the waves against the bulwarks of the house, and 
smelled what they supposed to be salt sea air, and 
they leaned out of the windows and wanted to throw 
up their situations, but a German in the party had 
a lemon and some cheese, which was given around 
to taste and smell, and they came out of it all right* 



MUSIC ON THE WATERS. 


Mr. Jarvis’ next idea, to accustom the prairie 
sailors to the vasty deep, was to take them out on 
the mill pond at Waupun in a skiff. They got out 
in the middle of the pond, and were playing a selec- 
tion from the opera of “Solid Muldoon,” when a boy 
who had slipped into the boat with a fish-pole, got a 
bite from a bull-head, which caused the vessel to 
roll, and the utmost confusion prevailed. Ordering 


peck's sunshine. 


73 


the snare drum player to '‘cut away ^Ae main bob- 
stay, and belay the cornet," Mr. Jarvis took the bass 
drum between his teeth and jumped overboard, fol- 
lowed by the band, and they waded ashore. 

On Monday last the band arrived in Milwaukee 
and reported on board the Goodrich steamer, in the 
river, ready for business. They were told to go as 
they pleased until evening, when they would be ex- 
pected to play before the boat started, and also on 
the trip to Chicago. The men sat around on deck 
all the afternoon, and smelled of the river. It 
smelled different from any salt water they ever 
snuffed, and they wanted to go home. 

At seven o’clock the band played a fe^^ tunes as 
the boat lay in the river, and finally she let go her 
ropes and steamed down toward the lake, the band 
whooping it up to the " Blue Danube." As the boat 
struck blue water, and her bow raised out about six- 
teen feet and began to jump, the cornet player 
stopped to pour water out of his horn, and lean 
against a post. He was as pale as death, and the 
tuba player stopped to see what ailed the cornet 
player, and to lean over the railing to see a man 
down stairs. The baritone had eaten something that 
did not agree with him, and he stopped playing and 
laid down in a life boat, the alto became cold around 
the extremities and quit playing and went to the 
smoke stack to warm himself, the b-fiat began to 
perspire and quit playing and fanned himself with 
the cymbals, and all of the horn blowers were e-flat 
and b-flat on the deck in less than two minutes. 

The captain noticed that there was some discrep- 
ancy in the music and came on deck to see about it. 
Wading through the brass horns he came up to 


74 


peck’s sunshine. 


where the band had been, and found Mck Jarvis 
beating blazes out of the bass'drum and Harve Hill 
carving the Blue Danube out of the snare drum, and 
that was all the music there was. The captain asked 
Jarvis what kind of a riot that was, and he told him 
it was the best they could do under the circum- 
stances. 

Kestoratives were applied to the members, and 
they braced up enough to start in on ‘‘Eocked in the 
Cradle of the Deep,^’ but they couldn’t play it 
through, owing to dyspepsia. The captain got them 
into the cabin to play for the young folks to dance, 
but the only thing they could play without getting 
sick was ‘‘Home Again, from a Foreign Shore,” and 
the bass drum had to do it all. The horn blowers 
were out looking at the starlight, leaning over the 
railing, as the stars were reflected in the water. 

At Racine it took some time to load, owing to 
rough water, and in the midst of it all a pale man, 
with a snare drum on his arm, rolled up against the 
captain. It was Harve Hill. He held his hand over 
his mouth and in a voice choked with emotion and 
fried potatoes he said: 

“ Captain, I am a poor man, but if you will land 
this boat and save me, I will give you nine dollars.” 

The captain decided to dispense with the music 
the rest of the night, and let the band get on its sea 
legs. 

At Chicago, the next morning, Jarvis, who had 
got a little sick, too, tried to induce the captain to 
allow the band to walk back to Milwaukee on the 
shore, beside the boat. He said they could play any 
tune that ever was played, on land, and the passen- 
gers could hear it just as well, if the boat kept 


peck’s sunshine. 


75 

alongside of the band. The captain wouldn’t let 
them off, and they have been kept on the boat all 
the week, so that now they are old sailors, and can 
play all right. But it was pretty tough the first 
night. Waupun is organizing a reception for the 
band when it comes home. 

WOMAN -DOZING A DEMOCRAT. 

A FEARFUL tale comes to us from Columbus. A 
party of prominent citizens of that place took a trip 
to the Dells of Wisconsin one day last week. It was 
composed of ladies and gentlemen of both political 
parties, and it was hoped that nothing would occur 
to mar the pleasure of the excursion. 

When the party visited the Dells, Mr. Chapin, a 
lawyer of Democratic proclivities, went out upon a 
rock overhanging a precipice, or words to that 
effect, and he became so absorbed in the beauty of 
the scene that he did not notice a Republican lady 
who left the throng and waltzed softly up behind 
him. She had blood in her eye and gum in her 
mouth, and she grasped the lawyer, who is a weak 
man, by the arms, and hissed in his ear : 

“Hurrah for Garfield, or I will plunge you head- 
long into the yawning gulf below !” 

It was a trying moment. Chapin rather enjoyed 
being held by a woman, but not in such a position 
that, if she let go her hold to spit on her hands, he 
would go a hundred feet down, and become as fiat 
as the Greenback party, and have to be carried 
home in a basket. 

In a second he thought over all the sins of his past 
life, which was pretty quick work, as anybody will 


76 


peck’s sunshine. 


admit who knows the man. He thought of how he 
would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all 
the fellows, if it once got out that he had been fright- 
ened into going back on his party. 

He made up his mind that he would die before he 
would hurrah for Garfield, but when the merciless 
woman pushed him towards the edge of the rock, 
and said, ‘‘ Last call ! Yell, or down you go !” he 
opened his mouth and yelled so they heard it in Kil- 
bourn City : 

‘‘Hurrah fpr Garfield ! How lemme go !” 

Though endowed with more than ordinary elo- 
quence, no remarks that he had ever made before 
brought the applause that this did. Everybody 
yelled, and the woman smiled as pleasantly as 
though she had not crushed the young life out of 
her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the 
altar of his country, but when she had realized what 
she had done her heart smote her, and she felt bad. 

Chapin will never be himself again. From that 
moment his proud spirit was broken, and all during 
the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He leaned 
listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned 
himself with a skimmer. When the party had 
spread the lunch on the ground and gathered around, 
sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them me- 
chanically, but his appetite was gone, and when 
that is gone there is not enough of him left for a 
quorum. 

Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, 
and drove the antmires out of a sandwich, and 
handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he either 
passed or turned it down. He said he couldn’t take 
a triok. Latter on, when the lemonade was brought 


peck’s sunshine. 


77 


on, the flies were skimmed off of some of it, and a 
little colored water was put in to make it look invit- 
ing, but his eyes were sot. He said they couldn’t 
fool him. After what had occurred, he didn’t feel 
as though any Democrat was safe. He expected to 
be poisoned on account of his politics, and all he 
asked was to live to get home. 

Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause 
him to forget the fearful scene through which he 
had passed. Only once did he partially come to 
himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and 
that was when it was found that he had sat down 
on some raspberry jam with his white pants on. 
When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said 
they were all welcome to his share of the jam. 

They tried to interest him in conversation by 
drawing war maps with three-tined forks on the 
jam, but lie never showed that he knew what they 
were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a 
brush, made of cauliflower preserved in mustard, 
and shaded the lines of the war map on Mr. Cha- 
pin’s trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in 
the jam. Then his artistic eye took in the incon- 
gruity of the colors, and he gasped for breath, and 
said : 

‘‘Moak, that is played out. People will notice it.” 

But he relapsed again into semi-unconsciousness, 
and never spoke again, not a great deal, till he got 
home. 

He has ordered that there be no more borrowing 
of sugar and drawings of tea back and forth be- 
tween his house and that of the lady who broke his 
heart, and he has announced that he will go with- 
out saurkraut all winter rather than borrow a ma- 


78 


peck’s sunshine. 


chine for cutting cabbage of a woman that would 
destroy the political prospects of a man who had 
never done a wrong in his life. 

He has written to the chairman of the Democratic 
State Central Committee to suspend judgment on 
his case, until he can explain how it happened that 
a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat hurrahed for Garfield. 

A LIVELY TRAIN LOAD. • 

Last week a train load of insane persons were re- 
moved from the Oshkosh Asylum to the Madison 
Asylum. As the train was standing on the sidetrack 
at Watertown Junction it created considerable curi- 
osity. People who have ever passed Watertown 
Junction have noticed the fine old gentleman who 
comes into the car with a large square basket, ped- 
dling popcorn. He is one of the most innocent and 
confiding men in the world. He is honest, and he 
believes that everybody else is honest. 

He came up to the depot with his basket, and see- 
ing the train he asked Pierce, the landlord there, 
what train it was. Pierce, who is a most diabolical 
person, told the old gentleman that it was a load of 
members of the legislature and female lobbyists go- 
ing to Madison. With that beautiful confidence 
which the pop corn man has in all persons, he be- 
lieved the story, and went in the car to sell pop 
corn. 

Stopping at the first seat, where a middle-aged 
lady was sitting alone, the pop corn man passed out 
his basket and said, ‘‘fresh pop corn.” The lady 
took her foot down off the stove, looked at the man 
a momient with eyes glaring and wild, and said, “It 


peck’s sunshine. 


79 


is — no, it cannot be — and yet it is me long lost 
of Oshkosh,” and she grabbed the old man by tlie 
necktie with one hand and pulled him down into the 
seat, and began to mow away corn into her mouth. 
The pop corn man blushed, looked at the rest of the 
passengers to see if they were looking, and said, as 
he replaced the necktie knot from under his left ear 
and pushed his collar down, ^‘Madame, you are mis- 
taken. I have never been a duke in Oshkosh. I live 
here at the Junction.” The woman looked at him 
as though she doubted his statement, but let him 
go. 

He proceeded to the next seat, when a serious 
looking man rose up and bowed; the pop corn man 
also bowed and smiled as though he might have met 
him before. Taking a paper of pop corn and putting 
it in his coat tail pocket, the serious man said, ‘‘ I 
was honestly elected President of the United States 
in 1876, but was counted out by the vilest conspiracy 
that ever was concocted on the earth, and I believe 
you are one of the conspirators,” and he spit on his 
hands and looked the pop corn man in the eye. The 
pop corn man said he never took any active part in 
politics, and had nothing to do with that Hayes busi- 
ness at all. Then the serious man sat down and be- 
gan eating the pop corn, while two women on the 
other side of the car helped themselves to the corn 
in the basket. 

The pop corn man held out his hand for the money, 
when a man two seats back came forward and shook 
hands with him, saying: “They told me you would 
not come, but you have come, Daniel, and now we 
will fight it out. I will take this razor, and you can 
arm yourself at your leisure.’' The man reached 


80 


peck’s sunshine. 


into an inside pocket of his coat, ' evidently for a 
razor, when the pop corn man started for the door, 
his eyes sticking out two inches. Every person he 
passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed 
his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket 
away and as he rushed out on the platform the 
basket was thrown at his head, and a female voice 
said, ‘‘I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8.” 

As the old gentleman struck the platform and be- 
gan to arrange his toilet he met Fitzgerald, the con- 
ductor, who asked him what was the matter. He 
said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the 
legislature, “but,” says he, as he picked some pieces 
of paper collar out of the back of his neck, “if those 
people are not delegates to a democratic convention, 
then I have been peddling pop corn on this- road ten 
years for nothing, and don’t know my business.” 
Fitz told him they were patients going to the Insane 
Asylum. 

The old man thought it over a moment, and then 
he picked up a coupling pin and went looking for 
Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has not 
been out of the house since. This Pierce is the same 
man that lent us a runaway horse once. 

HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND’S TOOTH. 

Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that 
we would never own another dog. Six promising 
pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters 
and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, 
with the distemper and dog buttons, and by falling 
in the cistern, and we had been bereaved via dog 
misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janes- 


peck’s sunshine. 


81 


villGj has been bereaved on the nomination for at- 
torney general. We could not look a pup in the face 
but it would get sick, and so we concluded never 
again to own a dog. 

The vow has been religiou ’ ’ * * 



have promised us thousands 


never taken them. One conductor has promised us 
at least seventy -five pups, but he has always failed 
to get us to take one. Dog lovers have set up nights 
to devise a way to induce us to accept a dog. We 
held out firmly until last week. One day we met 
Pierce, the Watertown Junction hotel man, and he 
told us he had a greyhound pup that was the finest 
bread dog — we tliink he said bread dog, though it 
might have been a sausage dog he said — anyway he 
told us it was blooded, and that when it grew up to 
be a man — that is, figuratively speaking — when it 
grew up to be a dog full size, it would be the hand- 
somest canine in the Northwest. 

We kicked on it, entirely, at first, but when he 
told us hundreds of men who had seen the pup had 
offered him thousands of dollars for it, but that he 
had rather give it to a friend than sell it to a 
stranger, we weakened, and told him to send it in. 

Well — (excuse us while we go into a corner and 
mutter a silent remark) — it came in on the train 
Monday, and was taken to the barn. It is the con- 
foundedest looking dog that a white man ever set eyes 
on. It is about the color of putty, and about seven 
feet long, though it is only six months old. The tail 
is longer than a whip lash, and when you speak 
sassy to that dog, the tail will b^in to curl around 
under him, amongst his legs, double around over his 
neck and b«»ok over where the tail originally was 


peck’s sunshine. 


hitched to the dog, and then there is tail enough left 
for four ordinary dogs. 

It is the longest tail we have ever seen in one num- 
ber. If that tail was cut up into ordinary tails, such 
as common dogs wear, there would be enough for 
all the dogs in the Seventh ward, with enough left 
for a white wire clothes line. When he lays down 
his tail curls up like a coil of telephone wire, and if 
you take hold of it and wring you can hear the dog 
at the central office. If that dog is as long in pro- 
portion, when he gets his growth, and his tail grows 
as much as his body does, the dog will reach from 
here to the Soldier’s home. 

His head is about as big as a graham gem, and 
runs down to d point not bigger than a cambric 
needle, while his ears are about as big as a thumb to 
a glove, and they hang down as though the dog 
didn’t want to hear anything. How a head of that 
kind can contain brains enough to cause a dog to 
know enough to go in when it rains is a mystery. 
But he seems to be intelligent. 

If a man comes along on the sidewalk, the dog 
will follow him off, follow him until he meets an- 
other man, and then he follows him till he meets 
another, and so on until he has followed the entire 
population. He is not an aristocratic dog, but will 
follow one person just as soon as another, and to see 
him going along the street, with his tail coiled up, 
apparently oblivious to every human sentiment, it 
is touching. 

F’ ^ legs are about the size of pipe stems, and his 
feet are as big as a base ball base. He wanders 
around, following a boy, then a middle aged man, 
then a little girl, then an old man, and finally, about 


peck’s sunshine. 


83 


meal time, the last person he follows seems to go by 
the barn and the dog wanders in and looks for a buf- 
falo robe or a harness tug to chew. It does not cost 
anything to keep him, as he has only eaten one trot- 
ting harness and one fox skin robe since Monday, 
though it may not be right to judge of his appetite, 
as he may be a little off his feed. 

Pierce said he would be a nice dog to run with a 
horse, or under a carriage. Why, bless you, he 
won’t go within twenty feet of a horse, and a horse 
would run away to look at him; besides, he gets 
right under a carriage wheel, and when the wheel 
runs over him he complains, and sings Pinafore. 

What under the sun that dog is ever going to be 
good for is more than we know. He is too lean and 
bony for sausage. A piece of that dog as big as 
your finger in a sausage would ruin a butcher. It 
would be a dead give away. He looks as though he 
might point game, if the game was brought to his 
attention, but he would be just as liable to point a 
cow. He might do to stuff and place in a front yard 
to frighten burglar's. If a burglar wouldn’t be fright- 
ened at that dog nothing would scare him. 

Anyway, now we have got him, we v/ill bring him 
up, though it seems as though he would resemble a 
truss bridge or a refrigerator car, as much as a dog, 
when he gets his growth. For fear he will follow off 
a wagon track we tie a knot in his tail. Parties who 
have never seen a very long dog can call at the barn 
about meal time and see him. 


84 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


A SEWING MACHINE GIVEN TO THE BOSS GIBL. 

In response to a request from W. T. Vankirk, 
George W. Peck presented the Kock County Agri^ 
cultural Society with a sewing machine, to be given 
to the “boss combination girP’ of Rock County. 
With the machine he sent the following letter, 
which explains his meaning of a “combination 
girl,’’ etc. : 

Milwaukee, June 7, 1881. 

W. T. Vankirk — Dear Sir: Your letter, in refer- 
ence to my giving some kind of a premium to some- 
body, at your County Fair, is received, and I have 
been thinking it over. I have brought my massive 
intellect to bear upon the subject, with the follow- 
ing result : 

I ship you to-day, by express, a sewing machine, 
complete, with cover, drop leaf, hemmer, tucker, 
feller, drawers, and everything that a girl wants, 
except corsets and tall stockings. Now, I want you 
to give that to the best “combination girl” in Rock 
County, with the compliments of the Sun. 

What I mean by a “combination,” is one that in 
the opinion of your Committee has all the modern 
improvements, and a few of the old-fashioned faults, 
such as health, etc. She must be good-looking, that 
is, not too handsome, but just handsome enough. 
You don’t want to give this machine to any female 
statue, or parlor ornament, who don’t know how to 
play a tune on it, or who is as cold as a refrigerator 
car, and has no heart concealed about her person. 
Our girl, that is, our “Fair Girl,” that takes this 
machine, must be “the boss.” She must be jolly 
and good-natured, such a girl as would make the 


wjck’s sunshine. 


85 


yoxiDg man that married her think that Rock County 
was the next door to heaven, anyway. She must be 
so healthy that nature’s roses will discount any 
preparation ever made by man, and so well-formed 
that nothing artificial is needed to — well, Van, you 
know what I mean. 

You want to pick out a thoroughbred, that is, all 
wool, a yard wide — that is, understand me, I don’t 
want the girl to be a yard wide, but just right. Your 
Committee don’t want to get “mashed” on some 
ethereal creature whose belt is not big enough for a 
dog collar. This premium girl wants to be able to 
do a day’s work, if necessary, and one there is no 
danger of breaking in two if her intended should 
hug her. 

After your Committee have got their eyes on a 
few girls that they think will fill the bill, then they 
want to find out what kind of girls they are around 
their home. Find if they honor their fathers and 
their mothers, and are helpful, and care as much for 
the happiness of those around them as they do for 
their own. If you find one who is handsome as 
Venus— I don’t know Venus, but I have heard that 
she takes the cake — I say, if you find one that is per- 
fect in everything, but shirks her duties at home, 
and plays, “I Want to Be an Angel,” on the piano, 
while her mother is mending her stockings, or iron- 
ing her picnic skirts, then let her go ahead and be 
an angel as quick as she wants to, but don’t give 
her the machine. You catch the idea ? 

Find a girl who has the elements of a noble wom- 
an ; one whose heart is so large that she has to wear 
a little larger corset than some, but one who will 
make her home happy, and who is a friend to all ; 


PECK’S SUNSHINE. 


se 

one who would walk further to do a good deed, and 
relieve suffering, than she would to patronize an ice 
cream saloon ; one who would keep her mouth shut 
a month before she would say an unkind word, or 
cause a pang to another. Let your Committee set- 
tle on such a girl, and she is as welcome to that ma- 
chine as possible. 

Now, Van, you ought to have a Committee ap« 
pointed at once, and no one should know who the 
Committee is. They should keep their leyes out from 
now till the time of the Fair, and they should com- 
pare notes once in a while. You have got some 
splendid judges of girls there in Janesville, but you 
better appoint married men. They are usually more 
unbiased. They should not let any girl know that she 
is suspected of being the premium girl, until the 
judgment is rendered, so no one will be embarrassed 
by feeling that she is competing tor a prize. 

Now, Boss, I leave the constitution and the girls 
in your hands ; and if this premium is the means of 
creating any additional interest in your Fair, and 
making people feel good natured and jolly, I shall 
be amply repaid. Your friend. 

Geo. W. Peck. 

DON’T APPRECIATE KINDNESS. 

One of the members of the Humane Society, who 
lives in an aristocratic ward, had been annoyed at 
hearing sounds from a stable near his residence, 
which indicated that a boy who had charge of a 
horse was in the habit of pounding the animal vigor- 
ously every morning, while cleaning off the dirt. It 
seemed to ti»e humane man that the boy must use a 


peck’s sunshine. 


87 


barrel stave or fence board to curry off the hor^^e, 
and the way the animal danced around the barn was 
terrible. 

It occurred every morning, and the humane man 
made up his mind that it was his duty to put a stop 
to it. He went to the barn one morning, just as the 
cotillion commenced. Looking through a knot hole 
he saw the horse tied so his head was away up to 
the top of the barn, so he could not use his teeth to 
defend himself. The boy stood with a curry comb 
in one hand and a piece of plank in the other, and 
he warmed the horse with both, and the animal 
kicked for all that was out. 

The humane man thought this was the worst case 
of cruelty to animals that ever was, and he rapped 
for admission. The boy, covered with perspiration, 
horse tail, stable refuse and indignation, opened the 
door, and the humane man proceeded to read him a 
lecture about cruelty to dumb animals, called him a 
fiend in human form, and told him that kindness 
was what was necessary, instead of a club. 

The boy couldn’t get in a word edgeways for a 
while, but when the man had exhausted his talk the 
boy told him that kindness might work on ordinary 
horses, but this horse was tLe meanest animal in the 
world. He would bite and kick without any provo- 
cation, and the present owner couldn’t sell him or 
give him away. He said that the only way he could 
be curried was to tie him up at both ends, and the 
only way he could be harnessed was to toss the har- 
ness on him with a pitch fork. 

The horse, with his head tied up so high that he 
could not use it, looked down at the humane man 
with one eye filled with emotion — the other eye had 


peck’s sunshine. 


been knocked out years ago — and seemed to be 
thanking the kind-hearted citizen for interfering in 
the matinee and causing hostilities to be suspended. 

The humane man was touched by the intelligent 
look of the horse, and insisted that the animal be 
untied and allowed its freedom. The boy said he 
didn’t dare untie him, for he would kick the side of 
the barn out, but the man insisted that he should 



“MEANEST ANIMAL IN THE WORLD.” 


release the horse, and went up to his head to do so, 
when the boy went through the manure hole in the 
side of the barn. 

What happened when the humane citizen untied 
the halter will perhaps never be definitely known, 
but no sooner had the boy struck the ground through 
the hole, than there was a sound of revelry in the 



peck's sunshine. 


barn, there came a yell through the crevices, there 
seemed to be a company of cavalry drilling on the 
barn floor, there was a sound as of cloth tearing, 
and then it appeared as though something was 
climbing up the inside of the barn, and after which 
the hind heels of the horse could be heard playing 
the snare drum on the manger. The boy roused the 
neighbors and they armed themselves and entered 
the barn. They found the horse in the stall, with 
its head where its tail should be, with its mouth full 
of pantaloons cloth, and kicking away as though tts 
heart would break. 

And the humane man, where, 0, where was he? 
Ask of the winds that far around with fragments of 
hat and coat tail strewed the barn floor. 

Shoot the horse," said a faint voice from the up- 
per part of the barn, and every eye was turned in 
that direction. The humane man was up there, 
clinging to a cross piece. He had evidently gone 
up the ladder which led to the hay loft, a little 
ahead of the horse, and as he clung to the cross 
piece, his coat tail gone, and the vital part of his 
pantaloons and some skin gone to that bourne from 
whence no pantaloons seat returns, his bald head 
covered with dust and cobwebs, he was a picture of 
meekness. 

The crowd got the horse into another stall, head 
first, and put bars across, and the humane man came 
down from his perch. Seizing a barn shovel, and 
spitting on his hands, he asked his friends to wait 
and watch him curry off that horse just a minute 
for luck. He said he only wanted to live just long 
enough to maul every rib out of the animal, and if 
he was forgiven for interfering in somebody’s else 


90 


peck’s sunshine. 


business this time he would try and lead a different 
life in the future. 

They put a horse blanket around his wounds and 
led him home, and he has given the boy five dollars 
to pound the horse an hour every morning for the 
next thirty days. You can’t make that man believe 
that a horse has any intelligence. 

RELIGION AND FISH. 

Newspaper reports of the proceedings of the Sun- 
day School Association encamped on Lake Monona, 
at Madison, give about as many particulars of big 
catches of fish as of sinners. The delegates divide 
their time catching sinners on spoon-hooks and 
bringing pickerel to repentance. Some of the good 
men hurry up their prayers, and while the ‘‘Amen” 
is leaving their lips they snatcli a fish-pole in one 
hand and a baking-powder box full of angle worms 
in the other, and light out for the Beautiful Beyond, 
where the rock bass turn up sideways, and the 
wicked cease from troubling. 

Discussions on how to bring up children in the 
way they should go are broken into by a deacon with 
his nose peeled coming up the bank with a string of 
perch in one hand, a broken fish-pole in the other, 
and a pair of dropsical pantaloons dripping dirty 
water into his shoes. ' 

It is said to be a beautiful sight to see a truly good 
man offering up supplications from under a wide- 
brimmed fishing hat, and as he talks of the worm 
that never, or hardly ever dies, red angle worms that 
have dug out of the piece of paper in which they 
were rolled up are crawling out of his vest pocket. 


peck’s sunshine. 


91 


The good brothers compare notes of good places to 
do missionary work, where sinners are so thick you 
can knock them down with a club, and then they 
get boats and row to some place on the lake where 
a local liar has told them the fish are just sitting 
around on their haunches waiting for some one to 
throw in a hook. 

This mixing religion with fishing for black bass 
and pickerel is a good thing for religion, and not a 
bad thing for the fish. Let these Christian statesmen 
get ‘‘ mashed” on the sport of catching fish, and they 
will have more charity for the poor man who, after 
working hard twelve hours a day for six days, goes 
out on a lake Sunday and soaks a worm in the water 
and appeases the appetite of a few of God’s hun- 
gry pike, e>nd gets dinner for himself in the bargain. 
While arguing that it is wrong to fish on Sunday, 
they will be brought right close to the fish, and can 
see better than before, that if a poor man is rowing 
a boat across a lake on Sunday, and his hook hangs 
over the stern, with a piece of liver on, and a fish 
that nature has made hungry tries to steal his line 
and pole and liver, it is a duty he owes to society to 
take that fish by the gills, put it in the boat and rea- 
son with it, and try to show it that in leaving its 
devotions on a Sunday and snapping at a poor man’s 
only hook, it was setting a bad example. 

These Sunday school people will have a nice time, 
and do a great amount of good, if the fish continue 
to bite, and they can go home with their hearts full 
of the grace of God, their stomachs full of fish, their 
teeth full of bones ; and if they fall out of the boats, 
and their suspenders hold out, they may catch a 
basin full of eels in the basement of their pantaloons. 


92 


peck’s sunshine. 


But we trust they will not try to compete with the 
local sports in telling fish stories. That would break 
up a whole Sunday school system. 

A DOCTOR OP LAWS. 

A DOCTOR at Ashland is also a justice of the peace, 
and when he is called to visit a house he don’t know 
whether he is to physic or to marry. Several times 
he. has been called out in the night, to the country, 
and he supposed some one must be awful sick, and 
he took a cart load of medicines, only to find some- 
body wanted marrying. He has been fooled so much 
that when he. is called out now he carries a pill-bag 
and a copy of the statutes, and tells them to take 
their choice. 

He was called to one house and found a girl who 
seemed feverish. She was sitting up in a chair, 
dressed nicely, but he saw at once that the fatal 
fiush was on her cheek, and her eyes looked pecu- 
liar. He felt of her pulse, and it was beating at the 
rate of two hundred a minute. He asked her to run 
out her tonghe, and she run out eight or nine inches 
of the lower end of it. It was covered with a black 
coating, and he shook his head and looked sad. She 
had never been married any before, and supposed 
that it was necessary for a justice who was going to 
marry a couple to know all about their physical con- 
dition, so she kept quiet and answered questions. 

She did not tell him that she had been eating 
huckleberry pie, so he laid the coating on her tongue 
to some disease that was undermining her constitu- 
tion. He put his ear on her chest and listened to 
the beating of her heart, and shook his head again. 


peck’s sunshine. 


03 


He asked her if she had been exposed to any con- 
tagious disease. She didn’t know what a conta- 
gious disease was, but on the hypothesis that he had 
reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, 
but only two evenings, because John had only just 
got back from the woods where he had been chop- 
ping, and she had to sit up with him. 

The doctor got out his pill-bags and made some 
quinine powders, and gave her some medicine in 
two tumblers, to be taken alternately, and told her 
to soak her feet and go to bed, and put a hot mus- 
tard poultice on her chest, and some onions around 
her neck. 

She was mad, and flared right up, and said she 
wasn’t very well posted, and lived in the country, 
but if she knew her own heart she would not play 
such a trick as that on a new husband. 

The doctor got mad, and asked her if she thought 
he didn’t understand his business ; and he was about 
to go and let her die, when the bridegroom came in 
and told him to go ahead with the marrying. The 
doc said that altered the case. He said next time 
he came he should know what to bring, and then 
she blushed, and told him he was an old fool any- 
way, but he pronounced them man and wife, and 
said the prescription would be five dollars, the same 
as though there had been somebody sick. 

But the doc had cheek. Just as he was leaving he 
asked the bridegroom if he didn’t want to ride up 
to Ashland with him, it was only eighteen miles, 
and the ride Would be lonesorfie, but the bride said 
not if the court knew herself, and the bridegroom 
said now he was there he guessed he would stay. 
He said he didn’t care much about going to AsMand 
anyway. 


94 


peck’s sunshine. 


THE DIFFERENCE IN HORSES. 

There has been a great change in livery horses 
within the last twenty years. Years ago, if a young 
fellow wanted to take his girl out riding, and ex- 
pected to enjoy himself, he had to hire an old horse, 
the worst in the livery stable, that would drive it- 
self, or he never could get his arm around his girl 
to save him. If he took a decent looking team, to 
to put on style, he had to hang on to the lines with 
both hands, and if he even took his eyes off the team 
to look at the suffering girl beside him, with his 
mouth, the chances were that the team would jump 
over a ditch, or run away, at the concussion. Riding 
out with girls was shorn of much of its pleasure in 
those days. 

We knew a young man that was going to put one 
arm around his girl if he did not lay up a cent, and 
it cost him over three hundred dollars. The team 
ran away, the buggy was wrecked, one horse was 
killed, the girl had her hind leg broken, and the 
girl’s father kicked the young man all over the or- 
chard, and broke the mainspring of his watch. 

It got so that the livery rig a young man drove 
was an index to his thoughts. If he had a stylish 
team that was right up on the bit, and full of vine- 
gar, and he braced himself and pulled for all that 
was out, and the girl sat back in the corner of the 
buggy, looking as though she should faint away if 
a horse got his tail over a line, then people said that 
couple was all right, and there was no danger that 
they would be on familiar terms. 

But if they started out with a slow old horse that 
looked as though all he wanted was to be left alone. 


peck’s SUirSHINE. 


however innocent the party might look, people knew 
just as well as though they had seen it, that when 
they got out on the road, or when night came on, 
that fellow’s arm would steal around her waist, and 
she would snug up to him, and— Oh, pshaw, you 
have heard it before. 

Well, late years the livery men have “got onto the 
racket,” as they say at the church sociables. They 
have found that horses that know their business are 
in demand, and so horses are trained for this pur- 
pose. They are trained on purpose for out door 
sparking. It is not an uncommon thing to see a 
young fellow drive up to the house where his girl 
lives with a team that is just tearing things. They 
prance, and champ the bit, and the young man 
seems to pull on them as though his liver was com- 
ing out. The horses will hardly stand still long 
enough for the girl to get in, and then they start off 
and seem to split the air wide open, and the neigh- 
bors say, “Them children will get all smashed up 
one of these days.” 

The girl’s mother and father see the team start, 
and their minds experience a relief as they reflect 
that “as long as John drives that frisky team there 
can’t be no hugging a going on.” The girl’s older 
•sister sighs and says, “That’s so,” and goes to her 
room and laughs right out loud. 

It would be instructive to the scientists to watch 
that team for a few miles. The horses fairly foam, 
before they get out of town, but striking the coun- 
try road, the fiery steeds come down to a walk, and 
they mope along as though they had always worked 
on a hearse. The shady woods are reached, and the 
carriage scarcely moves, and the horses seem to be 


n 


m 


peck’s SUNSHtNE. 


walking in their sleep. Tlie lines are loose on the 
da,sh board, and the left arm of the driver is around 
the pretty girl, and they are talking low. It is not 
necessary to talk loud, as they are so near each other 
that the faintest whisper can be heard. 

But a change comes over them. A carriage ap- 
pears in front, coming towards them. It may be 
some one that knows them. The young man picks • 
up the lines, and the horses are in the air, and as 
they pass the other carriage it almost seems as 
though the team is running away, and the girl that 
was in sweet repose a moment before acts as though 
she wanted to get out. After passing the intruder 
the walk and conversation are continued. 

If you meet the party on the Whitefish Bay road 
at 10 o’clock at night, the horses are walking as 
quietly as oxen, and they never wake up until com- 
ing into town, and then he pulls up the team and 
drives through town like a cyclone, and when he 
drives up to the house the old man is on the steps, 
and he thinks John must be awful tired trying to 
hold that team. And he is. 

It is thought by some that horses have no intelli- 
gence, but a team that knows enough to take in a 
sporadic case of buggy sparking has got sense. 
These teams come high, but the boys have to have 
them. 

ADDICTED TO LIMBURG CHEESR 

During the investigation of Chief Kennedy one 
witness testified to something that ought to make it 
hot for the chief. When men stoop to do the things 
that Mr. Chapin testified to, an outraged public sen- 


! 


FBeiC’S StTNSmKH. 


97 


t'ment has got to step in. Mr. Chapin testified — and 
tie is a man whose word is as good as our note — he 
said he met Kennedy in a street car, and his breath 
smelled of limburg cheese. That is enough. Carry 
ills remains out. 

Any man who will appear in a public place, among 
folks, with his breath smelling of limburg cheese, 
has got his opinion of us. It is simply damnable. 
We can see how a man who likes limburg cheese is 
liable, though he may have sworn off, to return to 
the mustard cup, and after the first taste, fill his skin 
full of cheese, arguing that one may as well die for 
an old sheep as a lamb. 

It is a well known fact, agreed to by all scientists, 
that a single mouthful will tarnish an otherwise 
^virtuous breath as much as a whole cheese. One 
mouthful of cheese leads on to another, and we are 
prepared to believe that if the chief smelled of cheese 
at all, he was full of it. 

Men cannot be too careful of cheese. If a man 
feels that he is going to commit the dastardly act of 
eating limburg cheese, he has time to go out to a 
glue factory, or a slaughter house, or the house of 
correction, or some other place whose offense is 
rank. 

The desire to eat cheese does not come upon a man 
suddenly, like the desire to take a drink, or stand 
off a creditor, and he is not taken possession of by 
the demon of appetite and pulled to the nearest 
saloon by a forty horse power devil, as is the man 
who has the jim jams. 

The cheese does its work more quietly. It whis- 
pers to him about 11 o’clock a. m. , and says there is 
nothing like cheese. He stands it off, and again in 

7 


feck's sunshine. 


the afternoon the cheese takes possession of him 
and leads him on step by step, by green fields, and 
yet he does not fall. But about 9 o’clock p. m. the 
air seems full of cheese, and he smells it wherever 
he goes, and finally, after resisting for ten hours, he 
goes and orders a cheese sandwich. 

Now, when the feeling first comes on, and he 
shuts his eyes and imagines he sees limburg cheese, 
if the victim would go and buy a slice and go away 
out in the country, by the fertilizer factory, he could 
eat his cheese and no one but the workmen in the 
fertilizer factory could complain. That is what 
ought to be done when a man is addicted to cheese. 

But this chief of police has stood up in the face of 
public opinion, eaten limburg cheese with brazen 
effrontery that would do credit to a lawyer, and ha^ 
gone into a public conveyance, breathing pestilence 
and cheese. There is no law on our statute books 
that is adequate to punish a man who will thus 
trample upon the usages of society. 

However, the conviction of Kennedy of eating 
limburg cheese will be the means of acquitting him 
of the other charge, that of conversing with a lewd 
woman. We^ doubt if there is a lewd woman, though 
she be tefe'ribly lewd, who would allow a man to 
come within several blocks of her who had been eat- 
ing that deceased cheese. 

If we were in Kennedy’s place we would admit 
the cheese, and then bring ten thousand women to 
swear whether they would remain in the same room 
with a man who had been eating that cheese. There 
are men who do eat cheese, bad men, the wicked 
classes, who go into the presence of females, but 
that is oaie thing oaixses m many suicides 


peck’s sunshine. 9^ 

among the poor fallen girls. When we hear that 
another naughty but nice looking girl has been fill- 
ing her skin full of paregoric and is standing off a 
doctor with a stomach pump, we instinctively feel 
as though some man with a smell of cheese about 
his garments had been paying attention to her, and 
she had become desperate. 

If they discharge the chief on that cheese testi- 
mony it will be a lesson to all men hereafter. 

TERRIBLE TIME ON THE CARS. 

There is something about the average Chicago 
young man that gives him away, and gives away 
anybody that gets in with him. He is full of prac- 
tical jokes, and is a bad egg on general principles. 

Last week Mr. Eppenetus Hoyt, of Fond du Lac, 
went to Chicago on a visit. He is a pious gentle- 
man, whose candor would carry conviction to the 
mind of the seeker after righteousness, and his pres- 
ence at the prayer meeting, at the sociable or the 
horse-race, is an evidence that everything will be 
conducted on the square. 

Mr. Hoyt knew a young man named Johnny Dar- 
ling, who was attending Rush Medical College, and 
through him was permitted to visit the dissecting- 
room, and gaze upon the missionary work being 
done there. Mr. Hoyt was introduced to a number 
of the wicked young men who were carving the late 
lamented, and after he got accustomed to the cli- 
mate he rather enjoyed the performance. 

Whether young Mr. Darling told the boys that 
Mr. Hoyt was ‘Hresh” or not, will, perhaps, never 
be known ; but, as Mr. Hoyt passed around among 
30 


100 


peck’s sunshine. 


the slabs where they were at work, each made a 
contribution from the stiff ” he was at work upon 
to ]rfr. Hoyt’s coat pockets unbeknown to him. 
While one was calling his attention to a limb that 
he was dissecting, another would cut off an ear, or 
a finger, or a nose, or dig out an eye, and drop the 
same into Mr. Hoyt’s overcoat pockets. Finally, he 
bid the boys good-bye, thanked them for their court- 
esies in showing him around, told them if they ever 
came to Fond du Lac his pew in church was at their 
disposal, and he skipped for the train and got on 
board. 

The seats were all occupied, and a middle aged 
lady, with a slim face and spectacles, and evidently 
an old maid, allowed him to sit beside her. The car 
was warm, and it was not long before the ‘‘remains” 
began to be heard from. He was talking to the lady 
about the “sweet by-and-by,”^ and the hope of a glo- 
rious immortality beyond the grave, and of the in- 
ducements held out by the good book to those who 
try to lead a different life here on earth, when he 
smelled something. The lady had been smelling it 
for some miles back, and she had got her eye on 
Mr. Hoyt, and had put her handkerchief to her nose. 
He took a long breath and said to the lady : 

“The air seems sort o’ fixed here in this car, does 
it not ?” and he looked up at the transom. 

“Yes,” said the lady, as she turned pale, and 
asked him to let her out of the seat, “ it is very much 
fixed, and I believe that you are the man that fixed 
it /” and she took her satchel and went to the rear 
of the car, where she glared at him as though he 
was a fat rendering establishment. 


peck’s sunshine. 


101 


Mr. Hoyt Je voted a few moments to silent prayer, 
and then his attention was called to a new married 
couple, in the seat ahead of him. They had been 
having their heads close together, when suddenly 
the bride said : 

‘‘ Hennery, have you been drinking 

He vowed by all that was great and glorious that 
he had not, when she told him there was something 
about his breath that reminded her of strong drink, 
or a packing-house. 

He allowed that it was not him, but admitted that 
he had noticed there was something wrong, though 
he didn’t know but it was some of her teeth that 
needed filling. 

They were both mad at the insinuations of the 
other, and the bride leaned on the window and cried, 
while the groom looked the other way, and acted 
cross. 

Mr. Hoyt was very much annoyed at the smell. 

The smell remained, and people all around him 
got up and went to the forward end of the car, or to 
the rear, and there were a dozen empty seats when 
the conductor came in, and lots of people standing 
up. The conductor got one sniff, and said : 

‘‘ Whoever has got that piece of limberger cheese 
in his pocket, will have to go in the emigrant car I” 

They all looked at Hoyt, and the conductor went 
up to him and asked him if he didn’t know any bet- 
tor than to be carrying around such cheese as that ? 

Hoyt said he hadn’t got no cheese. 

The conductor insisted that he had, and told him 
to turn his pockets wrong side out. 

Hoyt jabbed his hands into his pockets, and felt 
something cold and clammy. He drew his hand** 


m 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


out empty, turned pale, and said he didn’t have any 
cheese. 

The conductor insisted on his feeling again, and 
he brought to the surface a couple of human ears, a 
finger, and a thumb. 

“ What in the name of the Apostles have you got 
there ?” says the conductor. ^‘Do you belong to any 
canning establishment that sends canned missionary 
to the heathen cannibals ?” 

Hoyt told the conductor to come in the baggage 
car, and he would explain all ; and as he passed by 
the passengers, with both hands full of the remains, 
the passengers were ready to lynch Hoyt. He told 
the conductor wliere he had been, and the boys had 
played it on him, and the fingers and things were 
thrown beside the track, where some one will find 
them and think a murder has been committed. 

Afterwards Hoyt went into the car and tried to 
apologize to the old maid, but she said if he didn’t 
go away from her she would scream. Hoyt would 
always rather go away than have a woman scream. 

He is trying to think of some way to get even 
with the boys of Hush Medical College. , _ 

CHANGED SATCHELS. 

There was one of those old fashioned mistakes 
occurred on the train from Monroe to Janesville a 
week or so ago. A traveling man and a girl wh^ 
was going to Milton College sat in adjoining seats, 
and their satchels were exactly alike, and the travel- 
ing man took the wrong satchel and got off at 
Janesville, and the girl went on to Milton. 


peck’s sunshine. 


lOS 


The drummer went down to Vankirk’s grocery 
and put his satchel on the counter, and asked Van 
how his liver was getting along, while he picked a 
piece off a codfish and ate it, and then smelled of his 
fingers and said ‘‘Whew!” Van said his liver was 
“not very torpid, thank you; how are you fixed for 
tea?” The drummer said he wished he had as many 
dollars as he was fixed for tea, and began to open 
his sample case. Van cut off a piece of cheese and 
was eating it while he walked along towards the 
drummer. 

When the case was opened the drummer fell over 
against a barrel of brooms, and grasping a keg of 
maple syrup for support, turned pale and said he’d 
be dashed. Van looked in the sample case, and said, 
“Fixed for tea! I should think you was, but it 
wasnT that kind of tea I want.” 

There was a long female night-shirt, clapboarded 
up in front with trimming and starch, and buttoned 
from Genesis to Revelations. Van took a butter 
tryer and lifted it out, and there was more than a 
peck measure full of stuff that never belonged in no 
grocery. Van said: “If you are traveling for a 
millinery house I will send a boy to direct you to a 
millinery store.” 

The drummer wiped the perspiration from his 
face with a coffee sack and told Van he would give 
him a million dollars if he never would let the house 
in Milwaukee know about it, and he chucked the 
things back in. “What is this?” said Van, as he 
held up a pair of giddy looking affairs that no drum- 
mer ever wore on his own person. “Don’t ask me,*' 
says the drummer. “I am not a married man.” 


104 


peck’s sunshine. 


He took the satchel and went to Milton on the 
next train. The girl had opened the satchel which 
fell to her in the division to show her room-mate 
how to make a stitch, in crochet, and when the 
brown sugar, coffee, tea, rice, bottles of syrup, mac- 
caroni and a pack of cards came in sight, she fairly 
squeaked. Along after dinner the drummer called 
and asked for an exchange, and they exchanged, 
and it was hard to tell which blushed the most. 

THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHUBCH CHOIR. 

You may organize a church choir and think you 
have got it down fine, and that every member of it 
is pious and full of true goodness, and in such a mo- 
ment as you think not you will find that one or more 
of them are full of the old Harry, and it will break 
out when you least expect it. There is no more 
beautiful sight to the student of nature than a 
church choir. To see the members sitting together, 
demure, devoted and pious looking, you think that 
there is never a thought enters their mind that is 
not connected with singing anthems, but sometimes 
you get left. 

There is one church choir in Milwaukee that is 
about as near perfect as a choir can be. It has been 
organized for a long time, and has never quarreled, 
and the congregation swears by it. When the choir 
strikes a devotional attitude it is enough to make an 
ordinary Christian think of the angel band above, 
only the male singers wear whiskers, and the females 
wear fashionable clothes. 

You would not think that this choir played tricks 
on each other during the sermon, but sometimes 


peck’s sunshine. 


loa 

they do. The choir is furnished witwi the numbers 
of the hymns that are to be sung, by the minister, 
and they put a book mark in the book at the proper 
place. One morning they all got up to sing, when 
the soprano turned pale as an ace of spades dropped 
out of her hymn book, the alto nearly fainted when 
a queen of hearts dropped at her feet, and the rest 
of the pack was distributed around in the other 
books. They laid it onto the tenor, but he swore, 
while the minister was preaching, that he didn’t 
know one card from another. 

One morning last summer, after the tenor had 
been playing tricks all spring on the rest of the 
choir, the soprano brought a chunk of shoemaker’s 
wax to church. The tenor was arrayed like Solomon, 
in all his glory, with white pants, and a Seymour 
coat. The tenor got up to see who* the girl was who 
came in with the old lady, and while he was up the 
soprano put the shoemakers’ wax on the chair, and 
the tenor sat down on it. They all saw it, and they 
waited for the result. It was an awful long prayer, 
and the church was hot, the tenor was no iceberg 
himself, and shoemakers’ wax melts at ninety-eight 
degrees Fahrenheit. 

The minister finally got to the amen, and read a 
hymn, the choir coughed and all rose up. The chair 
that the tenor was in stuck to him like a brother, 
and came right along and nearly broke his suspend- 
ers. It was the tenor to bat, and as the great organ 
struck up he pushed the chair off of his person, 
looked around to see if he had saved his pants, and 
began to sing, and the rest of the choir came near 
bursting. The tenor was called out on three strikes 
by the umpire, and the alto had to sail in, and while 


106 


peck’s sunshine. 


she was singing the tenor began to feel of first base 
to see what was the matter. When he got his hand 
on the shoemaker’s warm wax his heart smote him, 
and he looked daggers at the soprano, but she put 
on a pious look and got her mouth ready to sing 
“ Hold the Fort.” 

Well, the tenor sat down on a white handkerchief 
before he went home, and he got home without any- 
body seeing him, and he has been, as the old saying 
i«, “laying” for the soprano ever since to get even. 

. It is customary in all first-class choirs for the male 
singers to furnish candy for the lady singers, and 
the other day the tenor went to a candy factory and 
had a peppermint lozenger made with about half a 
teaspoonful of cayenne pepper in the centre of it. 
On Christmas he took his lozenger to church and 
concluded to get even with the soprano if he died for 
it. 

Candy had been passed around, and just before the 
hymn was given out in which the soprano was to 
^ing a solo, “Hearer My God to Thee,” the wicked 
wretch gave her the loaded lozenger. She put it in 
her mouth and nibbed off the edges, and was rolling 
it as a sweet morsel under her tongue, when the 
organ struck up and they all arose. While the choir 
was skirmishing on the first part of the verse and 
getting scored up for the solo, she chewed what was 
left of the candy and swallowed it. 

Well, if a democratic torch -light procession had 
marched unbidden down her throat she couldn’t 
have been any more astonished. She leaned over to 
pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, 
but there was enough pepper left around the selvage 
>f her mouth to have pickled a peck of chow-chow. 


peck’s sunshine. 


107 


It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the 
book, her eyes filled with tears, her voice trembled, 
her face was as red as a spanked lobster, and the 
way she sung that old hymn was a caution. With 
a sweet tremulo she sung, Charge to Keep I 
Have,” and the congregation was almost melted to 
tears. 

As she stopped, while the organist got in a little 
work, she turned her head, opened her mouth and 
blew out her breath with a ^‘whoosh,” to cool her 
mouth. The audience saw her wipe a tear away, 
but did not hear the sound of her voice as she 
“whooshed.” She wiped out some of the pepper 
with her handkerchief and sang the other verses 
with a good deal of fervor, and the choir sat down, 
all of the members looking at the soprano. 

She called for water. The noble tenor went and 
got it for her, and after she had drank a couple of 
quarts, she whispered to him: “Young man, I will 
get even with you for that peppermint candy if I 
have to live a thousand years, and don’t you forget 
it,” and then they all sat down and looked pious, 
while the minister preached a most beautiful sermon 
on “Faith.” We expect that tenor will be Mowed 
through the roof some Sunday morning, and the 
congregation will wonder what he is in such a hurry 
for. 

SENSE IN LITTLE BUGS. 

There is a cockroach that makes his home on our 
desk that has got more senfee than a delinquent sub- 
scriber. He — if it is a he one ; we are not clear as 
to that — comes out and sits on the side of the paste- 


108 


peck’s sunshine. 


dish, and draws in a long breath. If the paste is 
fresh he eats it, and wiggles his polonaise as much 
as to thank us, and goes away refreshed. If the 
paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a 
mournful expression, and goes away looking as 
though it was a mighty mean trick to play on a 
cockroach, and he runs about as though he was 
offended. When a package of wedding cake is 
placed on the desk he is the first one to find it out, 
and he sits and waits till we cut the string, when 
he goes into it and walks all over the cake till he 
strikes the bridal cake, when he gets onto it, stands 
on his head and seems to say, “Yum, yum,” and is 
tickled as a girl with a fresh beau. 

There is human nature in a cockroach. When a 
man comes in and sits around with no business, on 
our busy day, and asks questions, and stays and 
keeps us from working, the cockroach will come out 
and sit on the inkstand a^id look across at the visit- 
or as much as to say : 

“Why don’t you go away about your business and 
leave the poor man alone, so he can get out some 
copy, and not keep us all standing around here do- 
ing nothing 

But when the paper is out, and there is a look of 
cheerfulness about the place, and we are anxious to 
have friends call, the cockroach files around over 
the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly 
as he can, and seems to enjoy it. 

One day the paste smelled pretty bad, and we 
poured about a spoonful of whisky in it, and stirred 
it up. The cockroach came out to breakfast, and 
we never saw a person that seemed to enjoy the 
meal any more than the cockroach did. It seemed 


peck’s sunshine. 


109 


as though he couldn’t get enough paste. Pretty- 
soon he put one hand to his head and looked cross- 
eyed. He tried to climb down off the paste-dish, 
and fell over himself and turned a flip-flap on the 
blotting paper. Then he looked at us in a sort of 
mysterious way, winked one eye as much as to say: 

‘‘You think you are smart, don’t you, old baldy ?” 



Then he put one hand to his forehead as if in 
meditation, and staggered off into a drawer, coming 
out presently with his arm around another cock- 
roach, and he took him to the paste-pot, and he fllled 
up, too, and then they locked arms and paraded up 
and down on the green cloth of the desk, as though 
singing, “ We won’t go home till morning,” and 



no 


peck’s sunshine. , 


they kicked over the steel pens, and acted a good 
deal like politicians after a caucus. 

Finally, some remark was made by one of them 
that didn’t suit, and they pitched in and had the 
worst fight that ever was, after which one rushed 
off as if after a policeman, and the other staggered 
into his hole, and we saw no more of our cockroach 
till the next morning, when he came out with one 
hand on his head and the other on his stomach, and 
after smelling of the paste and looking sick, he 
walked off to a bottle) of seltzer water and crawled 
up to the cork and looked around with an expression 
so human that we uncorked the bottle and let him 
in, and he drank as though he* had been eating cod- 
fish. Since that day he looks at us a little suspi- 
cious, and when the paste smells a little peculiar he 
goes and gets another cockroach to e at some of it 
first, and he watches the effect. 

Now, you wouldn’t believe it, but that cockroach 
can tell, the minute he sees a man, whether the man 
has come in with a bill, or has come in to pay 
money. We don’t know how he does it, but when a 
man has a bill the cockroach begins to look solemn 
and mournful, and puts his hands to his eyes as 
though weeping. If a man comes in to pay money, 
the cockroach looks glad, a smile plays around his 
mouth, and he acts kitteny. He acts the most hu- 
man when ladies come into the office. If a book 
agent comes in, he makes no attempt to show his 
disgust. 

One day an old person came in with a life of Gar- 
field and laid it on the table, opened to the picture 
of the candidate, and left it. The cockroach walked 
through the violet ink and got his feet all covered, 


t>ECK^S SUNSHINE. 


llT 

and then he walked all over that book, and leK his 
mark. The woman saw the tracks, and thought we 
had signed our name, and she said she was sorry we 
had written our signature there, because she had 
another book for subscribers’ names. 

When a handsome lady comes in, the cockroach 
is in his element, and there is a good deal of proud 
flesh about him. He puts his thumbs in the arm- 
holes of his vest and walks around. 

One day we put our face up to a deaf young lady 
to speak to her, and the cockroach looked straight 
the other way, and seemed to be looking over an 
old copy of the Christian Statesman ; but when he 
found we only yelled at the lady, he winked as much 
as to say : 

‘‘Well, how did / know ?” 

O, that cockroach is a thoroughbred ! 

SUMMER RESORTING. 

The other day a business man who has one of the 
nicest houses in the nicest ward in the city, and who 
has horses and carriages in plenty, and who usually 
looks as clean as though just out of a band box and 
as happy as a schoolma’am at a vacation picnic, got 
on a street car near the depot, a picture of a total 
wreck. He had on a long linen duster, the collar 
tucked down under the neck band of his shirt, which 
had no collar on, his cuffs were sticking out of his 
coat pocket, his eyes looked heavy, and where the 
dirt had come off with the perspiration he looked 
pale, and he was cross as a bear. 

A friend who was on the car, on the way up town, 
after a day’s work, with a clean shirt on, a white 


112 


peck’s sunshine. 


vest and a general look of coolness, accosted the 
traveler as follows: 

‘‘Been summer resorting, I hear?” 

The dirty-looking man crossed his legs with a 
painful effort, as though his drawers stuck to his 
legs and almost peeled the bark off, and answered: 

“Yes, I have been out two weeks. I have struck 
ten different hotels, and if you ever hear of my leav- 
ing town again during the hot weather, you can 
take my head for a spft thing,” and he wiped a cin- 
der out of his eye with what was once a clean hand- 
kerchief. 

“ Had a good, cool time, I suppose, and enjoyed 
yourself,” said the man who had not been out of 
town. 

“ Cool time, hell,” said the man, who has a pew in 
fcwo churches, as he kicked his limp satchel of dirty 
clothes under the car seat. “ I had rather been sen- 
tenced to the house of correction for a month.” 

“Why, what’s the trouble?” 

“Well, there is no trouble, for people who like 
Jhat kind of fun, but this lets me out. I do not 
nlame people who- live in Southern States for com- 
ing North, because they enjoy things as a luxury 
that we who live in Wisconsin have as a regular 
diet, but for a Chicago or Milwaukee man to go into 
the country to swelter and be kept awake nights is 
bald lunacy. Why, since I have been out I have 
slept in a room a size smaller than the closet my wife 
keeps her linen in, with one window that brought in 
air from a laundry, and I slept on a cot that shut 
up like a jack-knife and always caught me in the 
hinge where it hurt. 


peck's sunshine. 


IIS 

At another hotel I had a broken-handled pitchei- 
of water that had been used to rinse clothes in, and 
I can show you the indigo on my neck. I had a 
piece of soap that smelled like a tannery, and if the 
towel was not a recent damp diaper then I have 
never raised six children. 

At one hotel I was the first man at the table, and 
two families came in and were waited on before the 
Senegambian would look at me, and after an hour 
and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some 
roast be^f and baked potatoes, but the perspiring, 
thick-headed pirate brought me some boiled mutton 
and potatoes that looked as though they had been 
put in a wash-tub and mashed by treading on them 
barefooted. I paid twenty-five cents for a lemonade 
made of water and vinegar, with a piece of some- 
thing on top that might be lemon peel, and it might 
be pumpkin rind. 

“ The only night’s rest I got was one night when 
I slept in a car seat. At the hotel the regular guests 
were kept awake till 12 o’clock by number six headed 
boys and girls dancing until midnight to the music 
of a professional piano boxer, and then for two hours 
the young folks sat on the stairs and yelled and 
laughed, and after that the girls went to bed and 
talked two hours more, while the boys went and got 
drunk and sang ‘Allegezan and Kalamazoo.’ 

“ Why, at one place I was woke up at 3 o’clock in 
the morning by what I thought was a chariot race 
in the hall outside, but it was only a lot of young 
bloods rolling ten pins down by the rooms, using 
empty wine bottles for pins and China cuspidores 
for balls. I would have gone out and shot enough 
drunken galoots for a mess, only I was afrsid a eus* 


114: 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


pidore would carom on my jaw. Talk about rest, 1 
would rather go to a boiler factory. 

“ Say, I don’t know as you would believe it, but at 
one place I sent some shirts and things to be washed, 
and they sent to my room a lot of female under- 
clothes, and when I kicked about it to the landlord 
he said I would have to wear them, as they had no 
time to rectify mistakes. He said the season was 
short and they had, to get in their work, and he 
charged me Fifth Avenue Hotel prices with a face 
that was child-like and bland, when he knew I had 
been wiping on diapers for two days in place of 
towels. 

“ But I must get off here and see if I can find water 
enough to bathe all over. I will see you down town 
after I bury these clothes.” 

And the sticky, cross man got off, swearing at 
summer hotels and pirates. We don’t see where he 
could have been traveling. 

THE GOSPEL CAB. 

Because there are cars for the luxurious, and smoking cars for 
those who delight in tobacco, some of the religious people of Con- 
necticut are petitioning the railway companies to fit up “Gospel 
cars.” Instead of the card tables they want an organ and 
piano, they want the seats arranged facing the center of the car, 
so they can have a full view of whoever may conduct the services; 
instead of spittoons they will have a carpet, and instead of cards 
they want Bibles and Gospel song books . — Chicago News. 

There is an idea for you. Let some railroad com- 
pany fit up a Gospel car according to the above pre- 
scription, and run it, and the porter on that car 
would be the most lonesome individual on the train. 
The Gospel hymn books would in a year appear as 


peck’s sunshine. 


115 


Slew as do now the Bibles that are put up in all cars. 
Of the millions of people who ride in the trains, 
many .of them pious Christians, who has ever seen a 
man or woman take a Bible off the iron rack and 
read it a single minute ? And yet you can often see 
ministers and other professing Christians in the 
smoking car, puffing a cigar and reading a daily 
paper. 

Why, it is all they can do to get a congregation in 
a church on Sunday ; and does any one suppose that 
when men and women are traveling for business or 
pleasure — and they do not travel for anything else 
— that they are going into a “Gospel car” to listen 
to some sky pirate who has been picked up for the 
purpose, talk about the prospects of landing the 
cargo in heaven ? 

Not much ! 

The women are too much engaged looking after 
their baggage, and keeping the cinders out of their 
eyes, and keeping the children’s heads out of the 
window, and keeping their fingers from being 
jammed, to look out for their immortal souls. And 
the men are too much absorbed in the object of their 
trip to listen to gospel truths. They are thinking 
about whether they will be able to get a room at the 
hotel, or whether they will have to sleep on a cot. 

Nobody can sing gospel songs on a car, with their 
throats full of cinders, and their eyes full of dust, 
and the chances are if anybody should strike up, “A 
charge to keep I have,” some pious sinner who was 
trying to take a nap in the comer of the gospel car 
would say ; 

“ O, go and hire a hall T 


31 


116 


peck’s sunshine. 


It would be necessary to make an extra charge ot 
half a dollar to those who occupied the gospel car, 
the same as is charged on the parlor car, and you 
wouldn’t get two persons on an average train full 
that would put up a nickel. 

Why, we know a Wisconsin Christian, worth a 
million dollars, who, when he comes up from Chi- 
cago to the place where he lives, hangs up his over- 
coat in the parlor car, and then goes into the for- 
ward car and rides jfcill the whistle blows for his 
town, when he goes in and gets his coat and never 
says thirty-five cents to the conductor, or ten cents 
to the porter. Do you think a gospel car would catch 
him for half a dollar ? He would see you in Hades 
first. 

The best way is to take a little eighteen carat re- 
ligion along into the smoking car, or any other car 
you may happen to be in. 

A man — as we understand religion from those who 
have had it — does not have to howl to the accompa- 
niment of an asthmatic organ, pumped by a female 
with a cinder in her eye and smut on her nose, in 
order to enjoy religion, and he does not have to be in 
the exclusive company of other pious people to get the 
worth of his money. There is a great deal of relig- 
ion in sitting in a smoking car, smoking dog-leg 
tobacco in a briar-wood pipe, and seeing happy face6 
in the smoke that curls up — faces of those you have 
made happy by kind words, good deeds, or half & 
dollar put where it will drive away hunger, instead 
of paying it out for a reserved seat in a gospel ©ar. 
Take the half dollar you would pay for a seat in a 
gospel car and go into the smoker, and find some 
poor emigrant that is going west to grow up with 


back’s sunshine. 


117 


the country, after having been beaten out of his 
money at Castle Garden, and give it to him, and see 
if the look of thankfulness and joy does not make 
you feel better than to listen to a discussion in the 
gospel car, as to whether the children of Israel went 
through the Red Sea with life-preservers, or wore 
rubber hunting boots. 

Take your gospel-car half dollar and buy a veget- 
able ivory rattle of the train boy, and give it to the 
sick emigrant mother’s pale baby, and you make 
four persons happy — the baby, the mother, the train 
boy and yourself. 

We know a man who gave a dollar to a prisoner 
on the way to State prison, to buy tobacco with, who 
has enjoyed more good square religion over it than 
he could get out of all the chin music and saw -filing 
singing he could hear in a gospel car in ten years. 
The prisoner was a bad man from Oshkosh, who 
was in a caboose in charge of the sheriff, on the way 
to Waupun. The attention of the citizen was called 
to the prisoner by his repulsive appearance, and his 
general don’t-care-a-damative appearance. The citi- 
zen asked the prisoner how he was fixed for money 
to buy tobacco in prison. He said he hadn’t a cent, 
and he knew it would be the worst punishment he 
could have to go without tobacco. The citizen gave 
him the dollar and said : 

“Now, every time you take a chew of tobacco in 
prison, just make-up your mind to be square when 
you get out.” 

The prisoner reached out his hand-cuffed hands 
to take the dollar, the hands trembling so that the 
chains rattled, and a great tear as big as a shirt- 
button appeared in one eye — the other eye had been 


118 


peck’s sunshine. 


gouged out while having some fun with the boys’^ 
at Oshkosh — and his lips trembled as he said : 

** So help me God, I will !” 

That man has been boss of a gang of hands in the 
pinery for two winters, and has a farm paid for on 
the Central Railroad, and is “squar.” 

That is the kind of practical religion a worldly 
man can occasionally practice without having a 
gospel car. 

I 

INCIDENTS AT THE NEWHAIX HOUSE FIRE. 

There were a great many ludicrous scenes about 
the Newhall House during the fire of last Saturday 
morning. When people were notified that there was 
a fire in the house, but that the danger was not 
great, though it was thought best to give them all 
plenty of time to prepare for the worst, many 
jfisimped right out of bed and started down stairs. 

When we arrived on the scene, our first inquiry 
was for the safety of the lady members of the Rice 
Surprise Party, the young women who had been 
cutting up on the stage all the week with so little 
apparel. We did not expect to find them in a great- 
er state of barefootedness than^ they were when we 
saw them last, but in some instances they were. 

We were kindly yet firmly informed by Mr. Bel- 
kin that the ladies had been rescued. It seenaed 
that everybody wanted to save the girls. Mr. Ran- 
kin knew this, and knew that if the young and 
thoughtless gentlemen were allowed to rescue the 
girls it would cause remark. He said he was an old 
lina democrat, and that his days of kittenhood were 


peck’s sunshine. 


119 


over, and that it was proper that he should superin- 
tend the removal of the girls. 

Ml. McKittrick, the conductor, argued the matter 
with him. He said he had been running a train a 
good many years, and had seen all phases of hu- 
manity, and that he was inured to a life of hardship, 
and had seen many sad sights, in the sleeping cars, 
and he insisted that he be allowed to superintend 
the removal of the girls. 

The discussion became warm, and finally they 
compromised by agreeing that McKittrick should 
rush into the rooms and drag them out of the fire 
and smoke and hand them to Mr. Rankin at the foot 
of the first pair of stairs, who would dispose of them 
in safety. • They both agreed that the first outside 
vandal who laid a hand on them should die. 

The first trouble they had was with Prof. Has- 
kins. He came out of his room with nothing on but 
his glasses, an ascension robe and one boot. He 
rushed through the hall, and while in front of the 
room of the girl who wore the black tights with the 
crochet work on the limbs he ventured a joke. He 
is the telegraph manager and he said, “There is a 
line down here,” as a two inch stream struck him 
about the alleged pistol pocket. The girl, who was 
tying her wardrobe up in a napkin, heard him and 
said, “There is no lying down here, not much.” 
Prof. Haskins was shocked that any female should 
thus mistake him for a democrat, and falling over a 
zinc trunk head first, he went back to his room to 
send his son Harry out to help. 

Mr. McKittrick rushed into a room and grabbed a 
corset in his arms and handed it down stairs to Ran- 
kin. There is no person who can fool Rankin. Ho 


130 


feck's sunshine. 


threw the corset back, saying: ‘^There is no girl in 
this. Never mind the wearing apparel, save the 
girls." After handing down a few of the female 
clog dancers a cloud appeared on the horizon, and It 
was discovered that it was Hawley Cole. He said 
he came in to save the effects of the theatre. Mc- 
Kittrick threw him a pair of busted tights that he 
found in a room, and said, “This is one of the effects 
of the theatre." 

i 



Just at this point a girl with a waterproof on came 
along the hall and Mr. Cole asked her if she didn't 
want to be rescued. She said she had been carried 
down stairs six times already by a big granger, and 
ghe would shoot the next man that attempted to res- 



peck’s sunshine. 


12i 


cue ner. She said there was no danger, and wanted 
to know why the big galoots did not go and help put 
the fire out. 

On inquiry it was found that the girl had been 
carried down stairs six times and left on the side- 
walk. She -described the man who carried her out, 
and said he was excited, and no sooner would she 
get up stairs than he would grab her and carry her 
down again, until she was almost froze. He told 
her the last time that he had saved six girls from a 
fiery grave. 

THE WAY WOMEN BOSS A PILLOW. 

Among the recent inventions is a pillow holder. It 
is explained that the pillow holder is for the purpose 
of holding a pillow while the case is being put on. 
We trust this new invention will not come into gen- 
eral use, as there is no sight more beautiful to the 
eyes of man than to see a woman hold a pillow in 
her teeth while she gently manipulates the pillow 
case over it. 

We do not say that a woman is beautiful with her 
mouth full of pillows. No one can ever accuse us 
of saying that, but there is something home-like and 
old-fashioned about it that can not be replaced by 
any invention. 

We know that certain over-fastidious women have 
long clamored for some new method of putting on a 
pillow case, but these people have either lost their 
teeth, or the new ones do not grasp the situation. 
They have tried several new methods, such as blow- 
ing the pillow case up, and trying to get the pillow 
m before the wind got out, and they have tried to 


122 


peck’s sunshine. 


get the pillow in by rolling up the pillow case until 
the bottom is reached, and then placing the pillow 
on end and gently unrolling the pillow case, but all 
these schemes have their drawbacks. 

The old style of chewing one end of the pillow, 
and holding it the way a retriever dog holds a duck, 
till the pillow case is on, and then spanking the pil- 
low a couple of times on each side, is the best, and 
it gives the woman’s jaws about the only rest they 
get during the day. j 

If any invention drives this old custom away 
from us, and we no more see the matrons of our 
land with their hair full of feathers and their mouths 
full of striped bed-ticking, we shall feel that one of 
the dearest of our institutions has been ruthlessly 
torn from us, and the fabric of our national su- 
premacy has received a sad blow, and that our liber- 
ties are in danger. 

THE DEADLY PAPER BAG. 

There is a woman on the West Side who has 
learned a lesson that will last her a lifetime. She 
has been for years wearing these paper bags, such 
as the green grocers use, for bustles. . The paper is 
stiff, and sticks out splendid, and makes the dress 
look welL Last Sunday morning while she was 
dressing, her young son got in the room and blew 
the paper bag full of wind and tied a string around 
the mouth of it, and left it in a chair. The good lady 
took it and tied it on and dressed herself for church. 
She bribed her husband to go to church with her, 
though he is a sort of Bob Ingersoll Christian, 


peck’s sunshine. 


123 


Ab they went down the aisle the minister was 
reading a hymn about “ Sounding the Loud Hosan- 
na,” ahd the lady went into the pew first, and sat 
down while her husband was putting his hat on the 
floor. There was a report like distant thunder. You 
have heard how those confounded paper bags ex- 
plode when boys blow them up, and crush them be- 
tween their hands. 

Well, it was worse than that, and everybody 
looked at the innocent husband, who was standing 
there a perfect picture of astonishment. He look^ 
at his wife as much as to say: Now, this is th^ 

last time you will catch me in church, if you are 
going to play any of your tricks on me. You think 
you can scare me into getting religion?” 

The minister stopped reading the hymn and looked 
over his spectacles at the new comers as though it 
would not surprise him if that bad man should blow 
the church up. The poor lady blushed and looked 
around as much as to say, I did not know it was 
loaded,” and she looked the hymn book through for 
the hymn, and as the choir rose to sing she offered 
one side of the book to her husband, but he looked 
mad and pious, and stood at the other end of the 
pew and looked out of the stained glass window. 

After the service they started home together, and 
as they turned the first corner he said to his wife. 

Well, you played hell on your watch, didn’t you?” 
She told him there was no such thing as hell in the 
Bible now, but that she would make that boy think 
there had been no revision of the Bible that left hell 
out, when she got home. We only get the story from 
the husband. 


124 


WEiJL'6 SUNSHINE. 


He said he didn’t know what it was that mad^ the 
noise until they got home, and after a little skirmish- 
ing around his wife held up a bursted paper bag, 
and asked the boy if he blew that bag up. He said 
he did, but he did not know there was anything 
wrong about it. The boy and his mother and a press 
board paid a visit to the back kitchen, and there 
was a sound of revelry. Boys will be boys. 

THE VIRGINIA DUEL. 

The proposed duel between Senator Mahone and 
Jubal Early did not come off, for reasons that have 
not been made public. It is well known that Ma- 
hone is the thinnest man in Virginia. We do not 
allude to his politics, or his ability, in speaking of 
his being thin, but to his frame. He does not make 
a shadow. He could hide behind a wire fence. Gen. 
Early, after challenging Mahone, went to practic- 
ing at a piece of white wire clothes line, hung to the 
limb of a tree, but he could not hit it, and he felt 
that all the advantage would be on Mr. Mahone’s 
side, so he asked Mahone to do the only thing in his 
power that would make the thing even, and that 
was to eat a quantity of dried apples the day before 
the duel, in order to swell his stomach out so that a 
gentleman could stand some show of hitting him. 

Gen. Early pledged himself, on the honor of a 
Virginia gentleman, that he would not shoot at 
Mahone’s stomach, but would aim at it, and then 
make a line shot either above or below 

Mahone replied that, while he appreciated the ad- 
vantage he had over his opponent, and was willing 
to do anything reasonable to make the thing even, 


peck’s sunshine. 


125 


he could not consistently eat dried apples, as they 
would certainly kill him. He was willing to take 
his chanoes on the bullets of his opponent, because 
statistics showed that dueling was the most healthy 
business a man could engage in ; and he pointed to 
the number of duellists that were now living at a 
ripe old age, who had fought hundreds of duels and 
never received a scratch or scratched an opponent, 
but on the other hand he could produce proof to 
show that many people had been injured, if not 
killed, by an over-indulgence in dried apples. 

Mr. Mahone said he thought it was late in the day 
for him to produce any proof as to his own bravery, 
but in the face of the fact that he would be pointed 
at as one who had not sand, he should have to de- 
cline to eat dried apples in order to make himself a 
target. 

Gen.. Early said he appreciated the delicacy of his 
honorable and high-toned opponent, and respected 
his feelings, and would not insist on the dried apple 
act, but that he would go into training to reduce 
himself in flesh to the size of Mahone, and hoped 
that the affair might be declared off until he could 
diet himself. He said he should at once begin a 
course ot treatment to reduce his flesh, by boarding 
at a summer resort hotel that he had heard of, where 
the desired effect might be produced. 

So the duel is postponed for the present. Both Ma- 
hone and Early are high-toned gentlemen, and they 
will do nothing rash. 


peck's sunshine. 


THE DIFFERENCE. 

One of the great female writers on dress reform, 
in trying to illustrate how terrible the female dress 
is, says : 

“ Take a man and pin three or four table-cloths 
about him, fastened back with elastic and looped up 
with ribbons, draw all his hair to the middle of his 
head and tie it tight, and hairpin on five pounds of 
other hair and a big bov/ of ribbon. Keep the front 
locks on pins all night, and let them tickle his eyes 
all day, pinch his waist into a corset, and give him 
gloves a size too small and shoes the same, and a 
hat that will not stay on without torturing elastic, 
and a little lace veil to blind his eyes whenever he 
goes out to walk, and he will know what a woman’s 
dress is.” 

Kow you think you have done it, don’t you, sis ? 
Why, bless you, that toggery would be heaven com- 
pared to what a man has to contend with. Take a 
woman and put a pair of men’s four-shilling draw- 
ers on her that are so tight that when they get 
damp, from perspiration, sis, they stick so you can’t 
cross your legs without an abrasion of the skin, the 
buckle in the back turning a somersault and stick- 
ing its points into your spinal menengitis ; put on 
an undershirt that draws across the" chest so you 
feel as though you must cut a hole in it, or two, and 
which is so short that it works up under your arms, 
and allows the starched upper shirt to sand paper 
around and file off the skin until you wish it was 
night, the tail of which will not stay tucked more 
than half a block, though you tuck, and tuck, and 
tuck ; and then fasten a collar made of sheet zinc, 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


127 


fcwo sizes too small for you, around your neck ; put 
on vest and coat, and liver pad and lung pad and 
stomach pad, and a porous plaster, and a chemise 
shirt between the two others, and rub on some lini- 
ment, and put a bunch of keys and a jack-knife and 
a button-hook and a pocket-book and a pistol and 
a plug of tobacco in your pockets, so they will chafe 
your person, and then go and drink a few whisky 
cocktails, and walk around in the sun with tight 
boots on, sis, and then you will know what a man’s 
dress is. 

Come to figure it up, it is about an even thing, sis, 
— isn’t it ? 

SPURIOUS TRIPE. 

Another thing that is being largely counterfeited 
is tripe. Parties who buy tripe cannot be too care- 
ful. There is a manufactory that can make tripe 
so natural that no person on earth can detect the 
deception. They take a large sheet of rubber about 
a sixteenth of an inch thick for a background, and 
by a process only known to themselves veneer it 
with a Turkish towel, and put it in brine to soak. 
The unsuspecting boarding-house keeper, or restau- 
rant man, buys it and cooks it, and the boarder or 
transient guest calls for tripe. A piece is cut off the 
damnable tripe with a pair of shears used in a tin 
shop for cutting sheet iron, and it is handed to the 
victim. He tries to cut it, and fails ; he tries to 
gnaw it off, and if he succeeds in getting a mouth- 
ful, that settles him. He leaves his tripe on his 
plate, and it is gathered up and sewed on the orig- 
inal piece, and is kept for another banquet. , 


128 


peck’s sunshine. 


The tripe is expensive, owing to the royalty that 
has to be paid to the rubber company, and often the 
boarder succeeds in eating off some of the towel, so 
it has to be veneered over again ; but take it the 
year round, and the tripe pays its way in a boarding- 
house. 

A CASE OF PARALYSIS. 

About as mean a trick as we ever heard of was 
perpetrated by a doctor ht Hudson last Sunday. The 
victim was a Justice of the peace named Evans. Mr. 
Evans is a man who has the alfiredest biggest feet 
east of St. Paul, and when he gets a new pair of 
shoes it is an event that has its effect on the leather 
market. 

Last winter he advertised for sealed proposals to 
erect a pair of shoes for him, and when the bids 
were opened it was found that a local architect in 
leather had secured the contract, and after mort- 
gaging his house to a Milwaukee tannery, and bor- 
rowing some money on his diamonds of his ‘‘uncle,” 
John Comstock, who keeps a pawnbrokery there, he 
broke ground for the shoes. 

Owing to the snow blockade and the freshets, and 
the trouble to get hands who would work on the 
dome, there were several delays, and Judge Evans 
was at one time inclined to cancel the contract, and 
put some strings in box cars and wear them in place 
of shoes, but sympathy for the contractor, who had 
his little awl invested in the material and labor, in- 
duced him to put up with the delay. 

On Saturday the shoes were completed, all except 
laying the floor and putting on a couple of bay win- 


peck’s sunshine. 


129 


dows for corns, and conservatories for bunions, and 
the judge concluded to wear them on Sunday. He 
put them on, but got the right one on the left foot, 
and the left one on the right foot. As he walked 
down town the right foot was continually getting 
on the left side, and he stumbled over himself, and 
he felt pains in his feet. The judge was frightened 
in a minute. He is afraid of paralysis, all the boys 
know it, and when he told a wicked republican 
named Spencer how his feet felt, that degraded man 
told the judge that it was one of the surest symp- 
toms of paralysis in the world, and advised him to 
hunt a doctor. 

The judge pranced off, interfering at every step, 
’skinning his shins, and found Dr. Hoyt. The doc- 
tor is one of the worst men in the world, and when 
he saw how the shoes were put on he told the judge 
that his case was hopeless unless something was 
done immediately. The judge turned pale, the sweat 
poured out of him, and taking out his purse he gave 
the doctor five dollars and asked him what he should 
do. The doctor felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, 
listened at his heart, shook his head, and then told 
the judge that he would be a dead man in less than 
«ixty years if he didn’t change his shoes. 

The judge looked down at the vast expanse of^ 
leather, both sections pointing inwardly, and said, 
‘‘Well, dam a fool,” and “changed cars” at the 
junction. As he got them on the right feet, and 
hired a raftsman to tie them up for him, he said he 
would get even with the doctor if he had to catch 
the smallpox. O, we suppose they have more fun in 
some of these country towns than you can shake a 
stick at. 


9 


IBO 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


MALE AND FEMALE MASHING. 

There has been a great deal of talk in the papers 
labout arresting “mashers,” that is, young men who 
stand on the corners and pulverize women, and a 
great many good people got the idea that it was un- 
safe to travel the streets. This is not the case. A 
woman might travel all day and half the night and 
not be insulted. Of course, once in a great while, a 
woman will be insulted by a man, the same as a man 
will be by a woman. / 

No woman, unless she throws out one eye, kind of 
cunning, is in danger of having a male man throw 
out his other eye the same way. There has got to 
De two parties to a mashing match, and one must be 
a woman. Too many women act sort of queer just 
for fun, and the poor male man gets to acting im- 
proper before he realizes the enormity of the crime, 
and then it is everlastingly? too late. 

But a female masher, one who is thoroughly bad, 
like the male loafers that have been driven from the 
corners, is a terror. She will- insult a respectable 
man and laugh at his blushes. One of them was ar- 
rested the other day for playing her act on a police- 
man who was disguised as a respectable granger 
from Stevens Boint. These female mashers are a 
tornado. 

Why, one of them met a respectable church mem- 
ber the other night, and asked him how his liver 
complaint was. He was a man who had been 
troubled with the liver complaint, and supposing 
she was some acquaintance, he stopped on the cor- 
ner and talked with tlie pullet for about ten min- 
ut@«, explaining to her the course of treatment he 


peck’s sunshine. 


1^1 


had used to cure him, and dozens of people passing 
by that knew him, and knew that she was clear off. 

Finally she asked him if he wouldn’t take her to a 
restaurant and buy her a spring chicken and a small 
bottle. He told her if she would come up to his house 
she should have a hen, and there were lots of bottles, 
both large and small, that she was welcome to. She 
told him to go to Hades, and he went in a drug store 
and asked a clerk who that lady was he had been 
talking with, and when the clerk, who knew her, 
told him she was a road agent, a street walker, a 
female masher, the old man had to sit down on a 
box of drugs and fan himself with his hat. 

We mention this to show that ladies are not the 
only portion of the population that is liable to be ac- 
costed and insulted. The other night a respectable 
merchant was going to the opera with a friend from 
the country, when a couple of sirens met them and 
one said to the other, “Look at his nibs,” and she 
locked arms with him and asked him if he was not 
her own darling. He said his name was not “Nibs,” 
and he would have to look at his memorandum book 
before he could tell whether he was her darling or 
not, but from the smell of gin about her person he 
would blush to extemporize. 

We do not give his exact language, but in the 
heat of debate he shook her and told her if she ever 
clawed on him again he would everlastingly go and 
tell her parents. And while he was talking with 
her the other one had seated herself beside his coun- 
try friend on a salt barrel in front of a grocery and 
was feeling in his vest pocket to see if he bad any 
oioves. 


82 


152 


peck's sunshine. 


A female masher is much worse than a male 
masher as you can imagine. Who ever heard of a 
male masher feeling in an unprotected female’s vest 
pocket for cloves? O, the men are simply unpro- 
tected, and at the mercy of wicked, designing women, 
and the police ought to protect them. 

THE USES OF THE PAPER BAG. 

A First Ward man was told by his wife to bring 
home a quart of oysters oii New Year’s night, to fry 
for supper. He drank a few prescriptions of egg 
nog, and then took a paper bag full of selects and 
started for home. He stopped at two or three sa- 
loons, and the bag began to melt, and when he left 
the last saloon the bottom fell out of the bag and the 
oysters were on the sidewalk. 

We will leave the man there, gazing upon the 
wreck, and take the reader to the residence where 
he is expected. 

A red -faced woman is putting the finishing 
touches to the supper table, and wondering why her 
husband does not come with the oysters. Presently 
a noise as of a lead pencil in the key-hole salutes 
her ear, and she goes to the door and opens it, and 
finds him taking the pencil out of the key-hole. Not 
seeing ^ny oysters, she asks him if he has forgotten 
the oysters. 

‘^Forgot noth (hie) ing,” says he. 

He walks up to the table and asks for a plate, 
which is given him by the unsuspicious wife. 

‘‘ Damsaccident you ever( hic)see,” said the truly 
good man, as he brought his hand out of his over- 


peck's sunshine. 


18S 


coat pocket, with four oysters, a little smoking to- 
bacco, and a piece of cigar-stub. 

‘‘ Slipperysoystersev(hic)er was," said he, as he 
run his hands down in the other pocket, bringing 
up five oysters, a piece of envelope, and a piece of 
wire that was used as a bail to the pail. 

Got all my pock(hic)ets full," said he, as he took 
a large oyster out of his vest pocket. Then he be- 
gan to go down in his pants pocket, and finding a 
hole in it, he said : 

‘‘Six big oys(hic)ters gone down my trousers leg. 
S'posi’ll find them in my boot," and he sat down to 
pull off his boot, when the lady took the plate of oys- 
ters and other stuff into the kitchen and threw them 
in the swill, and then she put him to bed, and all the 
time he was trying to tell her how the bag busted 
just as he was in front of All Saints Oa(hic)thedral. 


Three distinct charges of heresy will be made 
against Kev. Dr. Thomas, of Chicago, at the tria\ 
next month. The amount of heresy that is going on 
in this country, and particularly among ministers, 
is truly alarming. The names of his partners in 
guilt are not mentioned, probably out of respect fop 
their families. A minister that goes around practic- 
ing heresy ought to be watched, and when caught 
at it he should be bounced. There is no excuse for 
heresy, though a minister will occasionally meet a 
mighty attractive her, but he should say: “Git thee 
foreninst me, Susan, and when I have a convenient 
season I will send the police after thee." 


134 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


There should be an amendment to the constitu- 
tion of the United States making it lawful for an ex- 
President to walk on grass. We have no great ad- . 
miration for Hayes, but when we read that at Cleve- 
land he was ordered off the grass by a thirteen dol- 
lar a month soldier, and had to shin it over a fence 
real spry to save the shoulder of his pants from as- 
sault by a cheap bayonet, it makes us feel ashamed, 
and we blush for America. The spectacle of a man 
who has occupied the White House, and been the 
chief attraction of county ^fairs, being compelled to 
put his stomach on a fence, and flop over, heels over 
appetite, like a boy playing tag, to keep from being 
jabbed in a vital part, makes us sick. 

THE NEW COAL STOVE. 

We never had a coal stove around the house until 
last Saturday. Have always used pine slabs and 
pieces of our neighbor’s fence. They burn well, too, 
but the fence got all burned up, and the neighbor 
said he wouldn’t build a new one, so we went down 
to Jones’ and got* a coal stove. 

You see, we didn’t know anything about coal 
stoves. We filled the stove about half full of pine 
fence, and, when the stuff got well to going, we 
filled the artesian well on the top with coal. It sim- 
mered and sputtered about five or ten minutes, and 
all went out, and we put on an overcoat and a pair 
of buckskin mittens and “went out too” — to supper. 
We remarked, in the course of the frugal meal, that 
Jones was a “froad” for recommending such a con- 
founded refrigerator to a man to get warm by. 


peck’s sunshine. 


135 


After supper we took a piece of ice and rubbed our 
hands warm, and went in where that stove Vfas, re- 
solved to make her draw and burn if it took all the 
pine fence in the First Ward. Our better-half threw 
a quilt over her, and shiveringly remarked that she 
never knew what real solid comfort was until she 
got a coal stove. 

Stung by the sarcasm in her remark, we turned 
every dingus on the stove that was movable, or 
looked like it had anything to do with the draft, and 
pret|:y soon the stove began to heave up heat. It was 
not long before she stuttered like the new Silsby 
steamer. Talk about your heat! In ten minutes 
that room was as much worse than a Turkish bath 
as Hades is hotter than Liverman’s ice-house. The 
perspiration fairly fried out of a tin water cooler in 
the next room. We opened the doors, and snow be- 
gan to melt as far up Vine street as Hanscombe’s 
house, and people all round the neighborhood put on 
linen clothes. And we couldn’t stop the confounded 
thing. 

We forgot what Jones told us about the dampers, 
and she kept a biling. The only thing we could do 
was to go to bed, and leave the thing to burn the 
house up if it wanted to. We stood off with a pole 
and turned the damper every way, and at every 
turn she just sent out heat enough to roast an ox. 
We went to bed, supposing that the coal would 
eventually burn out, but about 12 o’clock the whole 
family had to get up and sit on the fence. 

Finally a man came along, who had been brought 
up among coal stoves, and he put a wet blanket over 
him and crept up the stove and turned the proper 
dingus, and she cooled off, and since that time has 


156 


peck’s sunshine. 


been just as comfortable as possible. If you buy a 
coal stove you want to learn how to engineer it, or 
you may get roasted. 

A COLD, CHEERLESS RIDE 

Probably the most cold-blooded affair that ever 
occurred took place at a certain summer resort a 
couple of weeks ago. There was going to be a pic- 
nic, and a young man and ^he girl he was engaged 
to be married to started in a row-boat to cross the 
lake, taking an ice cream freezer full of frozen ice 
cream for the picnic. Just before arriving at the 
picnic the boat capsized. The boat was bottom side 
up, and the young man helped the girl on to the ice 
cream freezer, and he got on the boat, and after 
floating for half an hour they were rescued. 

The girl did not complain at the time she was put 
on the freezer, as she was glad enough to get on 
anything that would float, but after they got ashore, 
and she had a chance to reflect on the matter, and 
talk with the other girls, she concluded that his get- 
ting on the boat, which was nice and warm, and 
putting her aboard the ice cream freezer, which was 
so cold and cheerless, was a breach of etiquette that 
would stamp any man as being a selfish, heartless 
villain, and she refuses to speak to him, and has de- 
clared the engagement off. 

He is very much mortified over the affair, and 
tries to explain that he was more accustomed to a 
boat than she was, while he reasoned that she would 
naturally be more familiar with an ice cream freezer. 
It certainly looks to us to have been a cold-blooded 
transactioii, aiwi while the young man might have 


PECKS SUNSHINE. 


137 


been rattled, and powerless to grasp tlfeie situation as 
he v/ould if he had it to do over again, the girl is 
certainly justified in being indignant. 

An ice cream freezer is a cold and cheerless com- 
panion even when empty, but filled with congealed 
cream and pounded ice, and in water, it cannot but 
have been an Arctic exploration on a small scale. 
Besides the ice, it is a notorious fact that ice cream 
freezers are made of zinc, the coldest metal in the 
world, if we bar women’s feet. 

'^Sheridan’s Bide” has been spoken of in poetry 
and in song, but it pales into insignificance by the 
side of this girl’s ride on the ice cream freezer. If 
the young man had exhibited foresight, and had a 
side saddle buckled on to the ice cream freezer, the 
experience would have been robbed of much of its 
frigidity, or if there had been a thick blanket under 
the saddle, but he failed to take even that precaution. 

As it is we do not blame the girl for breaking off 
the engagement. In addition, we think any court 
would decide that he should pay for the ginger tea 
and cough lozenges that she had to take to cure her 
cold. 


SOME TALK ABOUT MONOPOLIES. 

We know it is fashionable for people to talk about 
the great monopolies, the railroads, and show how 
they are sapping the life-blood from the farmers by 
arranging facilities for transporting wheat worth 
forty cents a bushel in store pay, without railroads, 
to a market where the farmer realizes nearly a dol- 
lar a bushel in cash. 


13S 


peck’s sunshine. 


Demagogues ring the changes on these monopo- 
lies, tell how the directors ride in palace cars and 
drink wine, from the proceeds of the millions of dol- 
lars invested in railroads, though they never men- 
tion the fact that the railroads have made it possi- 
ble for farmers to give up driving ox teams and ride 
after horses that can trot in 2:40. 

We presume that railroad managers like to get a 
pretty good dividend on their investments, but do 
they get a better dividend than farmers do on some 
of their investments? Do you know of any farmer 
that ever complained that his produce was selling 
too high? If you complain at paying eight dollars 
for a jag of crow’s nest wood during a snow block- 
ade, does he argue with you, to show that he is a 
monopoly, or does he tell you that if you don’t want 
the wood you needn’t have it? 

Now, talking of railroad men manipulating stock, 
and taking advantage of a raise, how is it about 
eggs? Within the last two months there has been 
the worst corner on eggs that the world has ever 
seen, and the dividends that farmers have received 
on their investments have been so enormous that 
they must blush for shame, unless they are a soul- 
leiss corporation. 

Now, for instance, a farmer paid twenty-five cents 
for a good average hen the 1st of December. Before 
the 1st of February that hen has laid five dozen 
eggs, which are worth two dollars and a half. Take 
out five cents for feed, two cents for the society that 
the hen has enjoyed, and there is a clear profit of 
two dollars and forty-three cents, and the farmer 
has got the hen left. Did any railroad wrecker ever 
make a greater percentage than that? Talk about 


peck’s sunshine. 


139 


watering stock, is it any worse than feeding a hen, 
to make her lay four-shilling eggs? 

We have it from good authority that some farm- 
ers have actually gone so far as to bribe legislators 
with eggs, to prevent their passing any law fixing 
a rate for the sale of eggs. This is a serious charge, 
and we do not vouch for it. It is probable that farm- 
ers who are sharp enough to get a corner on eggs, 
by which they can be run up to a fictitious value, are 
sharp enough not to lay themselves liable for bribery 
by giving eggs directly to the members, but there 
are ways to avoid that. They can send them to the 
residences of the members, where they are worth 
their weight in gold almost. 

Rich railroad owners have submitted to this soul- 
less monopoly of the egg business as long as they 
can, and we learn that they have organized a state 
grange, with grips and passwords, and will institute 
subordinate lodges all over the State to try and 
break up this vile business that is sapping their life- 
olood. Already a bill has been prepared for intro^ 
duction into the legislature to prohibit any manipu- 
lation of the egg market in the future. ‘'Shall the 
farmers of the State be allowed to combine with 
hens and roosters and create a famine in eggs, an 
article of food on which so many people rely to keep 
soul and body together?” they ask. 

Our heart has bled, in the last sixty days, as well 
as our pocket-book, while studying this question. 
We have seen men of wealth going about the streets 
crying for an egg to cool their parched tongues, and 
they have been turned away eggless, and gone to 
their palatial homes only to suffer untold agonies, 
the result of these unholy alliances between farmers 


140 


peck’s sunshine. 


and hens. They have tossed sleeplessly on their 
downy beds, wondering if there was no balm in 
Gilead, no rooster there. They have looked in vain 
for compassion on the part of the farmers, who have 
only laughed at their sufferings, and put up the price 
of eggs. 

The time has arrived for action on the part of the 
wealthy consumers of eggs, and we are glad the 
State grange has been formed. Let a few determined 
men get together in every community, and swear 
by the bald-headed profit that they will put down 
this hen monopoly or die, and after they have sworn, 
let them send to us for a charter for a lodge — enclos- 
ing two dollars in advance — and we will forward to 
them the ritual of the order. 

If this thing is allowed to go on for five years 
these farmers will be beyond the power of the gov- 
ernment to control. This is a grave question, and 
if the wealthy people do not get relief we might as 
well bid farewell to our American institutions, as 
the liberty for which our forefathers fought will not 
be worth paying taxes for. 


There is no person in the world who is easier to 
overlook the inconsistencies that show themselves 
on the stage at theatres than we are, but once in a 
while there is something so glaring that it pains us. 
We have seen actors fight a duel in a piece of woods 
far ^away from any town, on the stage, and when 
one of them fell, pierced to the heart with a sword, 
we have noticed that he fell on a Brussels carpet. 
That is all wrong, but we have stood it manfully. 


peck’s sunshine. 


141 


We have seen a woman on the stage who was so 
beautiful that we could be easily mashed if we had 
any heart left to spare. Her eyes were of that 
heavenly color that has been written about hereto- 
fore, and her smile as sweet as ever was seen, but 
behind the scenes, through-the wings, we have seen 
her trying to dig the cork out of a beer bottle with a 
pair of shears, and ask a supe, in harsh tones, where 
the cork-screw was, while she spread mustard on a 
piece of cheese, and finally drank the beer from the 
bottle, an'd spit the pieces of cork out on the fioor, 
sitting astride of a stage chair, and her boot heels 
up on the top round, her trail rolled up into a ball, 
wrong side out, showing dirt from forty different 
stage fioors. 

These things hurt. But the worst thing that has 
ever occurred to knock the romance out of us, was 
to see a girl in the second act, after ‘Twelve years 
is supposed to elapse,” with the same pair of red 
stockings on that she wore in the first act, twelve 
years before. Now, what kind of a way is that? It 
does not stand to reason that a girl would wear the 
same pair of stockings twelve years. Even if she 
had them washed once in six months, they would be 
worn out. People notice these things. 

What the actresses of this country need is to 
change their stockings. To wear them twelve years, 
even in their minds, shows an inattention to the de- 
tails and probabilities of a play, that must do the 
actresses an injury, if not give them corns. Let 
theatre-goers insist that the stockings be changed 
oftener, in these plays that sometimes cover half a 
century, and the stockings will not become moth- 


142 


peck’s sunshine. 


eaten. Girls, look to the little details. Look to the 
stockings, as your audiences do, and you will see 
how it is yourselves. 

A BALD-HEADED MAN MOST CEAZY. 

Last Wednesday the bell to our telephone rung 
violently at 8 o’clock in the morning, and when we 
put our ear to the earaphone, and our mouth to the 
mouthaphone, and asked what was the matter, a 
still small voice, evidently that of a lady, said, 
‘‘Julia has got worms, doctor.” 

We were somewhat taken back, but supposing 
Julia was going fishing, we were just going to tell 
her not to forget to spit on her bait, when a male 
voice said, “O, go to the devil, will you?” We 
couldn’t tell whose voice it was, but it sounded like 
the clerk at the Plankinton House, and we sat down. 

There is no man who will go further to accommo- 
date a friend than we will, but by the great ethereal 
there are some things we will not do to please any- 
body. As we sat and meditated, the bell rung once 
more, and then we knew the wires had got tangled, 
and that we were going to have trouble all day. It 
was a busy day, too, and to have a bell ringing be- 
side one’s ear all day is no fun. 

The telephone is a blessed thing when it is healthy, 
but when its liver is out of order it is the worst nuis- 
ance on record. When it is out of order that way 
you can hear lots of conversation that you are not 
entitled to. For instance, we answered the bell af- 
ter it had rung several times, and a sweet little fe- 
male voice said, “Are you going to receive to-mor- 
row?” We answered that we were going to receive 


t»EC’K^S SUNSHINE. 


143 


all the time. Then she asked what made us so 
hoarse? We told her that we had sat in a draft 
from the bank, and it made the cold chills run over 
us to pay it. That seemed to be satisfactory, and 
then she began to tell us what she was going to 
wear, and asked if we thought it was going to be too 
cold to wear a low neck dress and elbow sleeves. 
We told her that was what we were going to wear, * 
and then she began to complain that her new dress 
was too tight in various places that she mentioned, 
and when the boys picked us up off the floor and 
bathed our temples, and we told them to take her 
away, they thought we were crazy. 

If we have done wrong in talking with a total 
stranger, who took us for a lady friend, we are will- 
ing to die. We couldn’t help it. For an hour w^ 
would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, 
but finally the bell fluttered as though a tiny bird 
had lit upon the wire and was shaking its plumage. 
It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an 
angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was 
handling the other end of the transmitter, and we 
felt as though it was wrong for us to sit and keep 
her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to 
pour into our auricular appendage remarks that we 
ought to hear. 

And still the bell did flut. We went to the cornu- 
copia, put our ear to the toddy stick and said, ‘‘What 
ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand tremble? 
Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy.” Then 
there came over the wire and into our mansard by a 
side window the following touching remarks: “Mat- 
ter enough. I have been ringing here till I have 
blistered my hands. We have got to have ten car 


peck’s sunshine. 


lU 

loads of hogs by day after to-morrow or shut down.” 
Then there was a stuttering, and then another voice 
said, ‘‘Go over to Loomis’ pawn shop. A man shot 
in” — and another voice broke in, singing, “The 
sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful” — 
and another voice said — “girl I ever saw. She was 
riding with a duffer, and wiped her nose as I drove 
by in the street car, and I think she is struck after 
me.” 

It was evident that the telephone was drunk, and 
we went out in the hall and wrote on a barrel all 
the afternoon, and gave it full possession of the of- 
fice. 


, Mr. Peck was recently extended an invitation to 
be present at a meeting of the Iowa Commercial 
Travelers’ Association, at Des Moines, and respond 
to the toast: “Our Wives and Sweethearts, and Lit- 
tle Ones at Home.” He couldn’t be present, but he 
responded all the same, in the following manner: 

“ That is the sweetest toast that man was ever 
called upon to respond to. Very few traveling men, 
who have good wives, loving sweethearts, and dear 
little children at home, sending loving messages to 
them, often ever stray very far from the straight 
and narrow path. There is no class of men on earth 
that has greater temptations and better opportuni- 
ties to be ‘cusses on wheels’ than the traveling men 
of the Northwest; and when I say that they stand 
up under it a confounded sight better than the same 
number of ministers or editors would, I don’t want 
you to think I am giving you any confectionery 
from my sample case. 


PECK^S SUNSHINE. 


145 


‘‘Through snows of winter, mud of spring and 
fall, and heat of summer, the traveling man makes 
his connections and sends in his orders, and seems 
to enjoy religion with the best of them. But the 
happiest days for him and the shortest are those he 
spends at home with his wife, the children or sweet- 
heart. There can be more tears brought to the eyes 
of the traveling man by a little child putting its 
arms around his neck and saying, ‘My dear, precious 
papa,’ than could be brought out by any other press 
1 know of, however powerful. 

“ I know there is occasionally a traveling man 
who always has his sign out ready to be mashed, ' 
but he never neglects his business for any foolish- 
ness. He would leave the finest country flirt that 
ever winked a wink to sell a bill of brown sugar on 
sixty days’ time. 

“It is said that the average traveling man will 
keep a whole seat in a car, and never offer to give 
half of it to a man, when, if a handsome woman 
comes in, he will fly around and divide with her. 
Well, who the deuce wouldn’t? That shows that his 
heart is in the right place. A man can go into the 
smoking car and sit on the wood box, but a woman 
has got to sit down, at least that is the way I should 
explain it. 

Boys, may the trips become shorter each year, and 
the visits to the dear ones at home be extended, so 
that in time you may be detailed to stay at home al- 
ways, with an increase of salary or an interest in 
the business; and, I am sure, when the time comes 
you will be the happiest fellows that ever had thou- 
seind mile tickets punched, and when your time 
comes to attend the grand banquet above, and you 


146 


peck’s sunshine. 


appear before St. Peter at the gate, and begin to 
open up your samples, he will simply look at your 
business card and turn to the clerk and say, ‘Give 
these boys all front rooms, and see that there is a 
fire escape and plenty ot towels, and that the rooms 
are aired, and then step down to the box office and 
reserve them some seats for the sacred concert this 
evening. Pass right in now and get a check for 
your overshoes.’ ” 

ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS AT THEATRES. 

Sometimes our heart bleeds for actors and actress- 
es, when we think what they have to go through 
with. The other night at Watertown, N. Y., Miss 
Ada Gray was playing “Camille,” and in the dying 
scene, where she breathes her last, to slow music, 
an accident occurred which broke her all up. She 
was surrounded by sorrowing friends, who were try- 
ing to do everything to make it pleasant for her, when 
the bed on which she was dying, — an impromptu 
sort of a bed got up by the stage carpenter, — tipped 
partly over, and the dying woman rolled over on 
the stage, tipped over a wash-stand filled with tum- 
blers and bottles of medicine, and raised a deuce of 
a row. It would have been all right, and she could 
have propped the bed up and proceeded with her 
dying, had not the actress got rattled. 

Most actresses get lost entirely when anything oc- 
curs that is not in the play, and Miss Gray was the 
scaredest female that ever lived. She thought it 
was a judgment on her for playing a dying charac- 
ter, and thought the whole theatre had been struck 
by lightning, and was going to fall down. To save 


peck’s sunshine. 


147 


herself was her first thought, so she grabbed her 
night-dress, — which was embroidered up and down 
the front, and had point lace on the yoke of the 
sleeves, — in both hands and started for the orches- 
tra, the wildest corpse that ever lived. 

The leader of the orchestra caught her, but not 
being an undertaker he did not undertake to hold 
her, and she fell over the bass viol and run one foot 
through the snare drum, and grasping the fiddle for 
a life-preserver she jumped into the raging scenery 
back of the stage -which represented a sea. 

They had to pull her out with boat-hooks, and it 
was half an hour before she could be induced to go 
to bed again and proceed with her dying. 

Actresses are often annoyed at. the remarks made 
by foolish fellows in the audience. A remark by a 
person in the audience always causes people to 
laugh, whether the speaker says anything smart 
or not. 

Recently, in the play of ‘‘Cinderella at School,” a 
girl came out with a sheet over her, as a ghost, to 
frighten a young fellow who was “mashed” on her. 
He looked at the ghost for ^ moment, and kept on 
lighting his cigarette, when a galloot up in the gal- 
ler}^ said, so everybody could hear it, “He don’t 
scare worth a damn !” and the audience went fairly 
wild, while the pretty girl stood there and blushed 
as though her heart would break. 

Such things are wrong. 

Probably one of the meanest tricks that was ever 
played was played on Mary Anderson. It will 
be remembered that in the play of “Ingomar,” Par- 
thenia and the barbarian have several love scenes, 
where they lop on each other and hug some — that is, 


148 


peck’s sunshine. 


not too much hugging, but just hugging enough. 
Ingornar wears a huge fur garment, made of lion’s 
skin, or something. One day he noticed that the 
moths were getting into it, and he told his servant 
to see about the moths, and drive them out. The 
servant got some insect powder and blowed the hair 
of the garment full of it, and scrubbed the inside of 
it with benzine. 

Ingornar put it on just before he went on the 
stage, and thought it didn’t smell just right, but he 
had no time to inquire into it. He had not got fairly 
in his position, before Parthenia came out on a hop, 
skip and jump, and threw herself all over him. She 
got one lung full of insect powder, and the other 
full of benzine, and as she said, ‘‘Wilt always love 
me, Ingornar ?” she dropped her head over his shoul- 
ner, and said in an aside, “For the love of heaven, 
what have you been drinking ?” and then sneezed a 
couple times. 

Ingornar held her up the best he could, consider- 
ing that his nose was full of insect powder, and he 
answered : 

“I wilt and then he said to her quietly : 

“ Damfino what it is that smells so !” 

They went on with the play between sneezes, and 
when the curtain went down she told Ingornar to go 
out and shake himself, which he did. 

It was noticed in the next act that Ingornar had a 
linen duster on, and Mary snoze no more. 

There was another mean trick played on a come- 
dian a short time ago. In one of the plays he comes 
into a room as a tramp, and asks for something to 
drink. There is nothing to drink, and he asks if he 
may drink the kerosene in the lamp, which is on the 


veck’s sunshine. 


table unlighted. The lamp has been filled with beer, 
and when he is told that he can slake his thirst at 
the lamp, he unscrews the top, takes out the wick. 



NEATS FOOT Olli FOR ONE. 


and drinks the contents. Everybody laughs, e^nd 
the idea is a good ong. 



?50 


peck’s sunshine. 


At Chicago, recently, some friend took out the 
beer and filled the lamp with a liquid of the same 
color, but the most sickish tasting stuff that ever 
was. The comedian drank about three swallows of 
the neatsfoot oil before he got onto the joke, and 
then he flew around like a dog that had been poi- 
soned, and went off the stage saying something like 

Noo Yoick.” 

He has agreed to kill the fellow that loaded that 
lamp for him. 

ALL ABOUT A SANDWICH. 

The time for getting to the Michigan Central 
depot at Chicago was so limited that no regularly 
prepared supper could be secured, and so it was 
necessary to take a sandwich at the central depot. 
There has been great improvement made in the 
sandwiches furnished in Chicago, in the last ten 
years. In 1870 it was customary to encase the sand- 
wiches in pressed sole leather. The leather was 
prepared by a process only known to a Prussian, 
and the bread and ham were put in by hydraulic 
pressure, and the hole soldered up. 

About four years ago, the Prussian who had the 
secret said something unkind to a pitcher of a base- 
ball club, and the pitcher took up one of the sand- 
wiches and pitched it curved at the Prussian’s eye. 
His funeral was quite largely attended, considering 
that he was a man who was retiring, and who made 
few acquaintances; but the secret of making the 
soles and uppers of railroad sandwiches died with 
him. 


peck’s sunshine. 


151 


It was about this time that corrugated iron 
shutters were invented, and that material was at 
once utilized to make lids for sandwiches, while the 
under jaw of the appetite-destroying substance was 
made of common building paper, the wholewarnished 
with neats foot oil, and kiln dried in a lime kiln. 

Our object in eating one of the sandwiches, was^to 
transfer, if possible, the headache to the stomach, 
on the principle that the quack doctor cured a 
patient of paralysis by throwing him into fits, claim- 
ing that he was not much on paralysis, but he was 
hell on fits. The entrance of the piece of sandwich 
into the stomach — that is, the small pieces that we 
were able to blast off with the imperfect appliances 
at hand in the tool box of a wrecking car — was 
signaled by the worst rebellion that has been wit- 
nessed in this country since 1860. The stomach, 
liver, lungs, spleen and other patent insides got up 
an indignation meeting, with the stomach in the 
chair. In calling the meeting to order the stomach 
said unaccostumed as it was to public speaking, it 
felt as though the occasion demanded a protest, and 
that in no uncertain tone, against the habit the boss 
had of slinging anything into the stomach that 
came in his way, without stopping to consider the 
effect on the internals. 

The chair remarked that it had heretofore had a 
good many hard doses to take, notably, army bacon, 
and later some black bread that the boss had shoved 
in while hunting out in Minnesota in 1876, and 
again last year when a pan full of beans from Bill 
Wall’s Wolf river boom boarding house was sent 
down without any introduction, the stomach said it 
had felt like throwing up the sponge,” and draw- 


152 


peck’s sunshine. 


ing out of the game, but it had thought better of it, 
and had gone on trying to digest things till now. 
But this last outrage, this Chicago sandwich, was 
too much. 

“See here,” says the stomach, holding up a piece 
of the iron lid of the sandwich so the liver could see 
it, “ what kind of a junk shop does he take this 
place for ?” 

The liver got the floor and suggested that the 
stomach was making a terrible fuss about a little 
thing, and told the stomach it had evidently for-* 
gotten the good things that had been sent down 
from above in times gone by. 

“You seem to forget,” says the liver, becoming 
warmed up, “ the banquets the boss never fails to 
attend, the nice dinners he sometimes gets at home, 
and the wild canvas-back duck he sends down when 
he goes to Lake Koshkonong, as well as the Palmer 
House dinners that occasionally surprise us. I move 
that' the stomach be reprimanded for kicking and 
trying to get up a muss, and that this meeting 
adjourn and we all go about our business.” 

The stomach tried to get in a word edgewise, but 
it was of no use, and the thing was about to bj/eak 
up in a row, when we went to sleep in one of the 
elegant Michigan Central sleepers, and in the morn- 
ing the stomach was coaxing for something more, 
and didn’t seem to care what it was. 

TWO GIRLS AT A PICNIC. 

No YOUNG man should ever take two girls to a pic- 
nic. We don’t care how attractive the girls are, or 
how enterprising a boy is, or how expansive or far- 


peck's sunshine. 


153 


reaching a mind he has, he cannot do justice to the 
subject if he has two girls. There will be a clashing 
of interests that no young boy in his goslinghood, as 
most boys are when they take two girls to a picnic, 
has the diplomacy to prevent. 

If we start the youth of the land out right in the 
first place, they will be all right, but if they start 
out by taking two girls to a picnic their whole lives 
are liable to become acidulated, and they will grow 
up hating themselves. 

If a young man is good natured and tries to do the 
fair thing, and a picnic is got up, there is always 
some old back number of a girl who has no fellow 
who wants to go, and the boys, after they all get 
girls and buggies engaged, will canvass among 
themselves to see who will take this extra girl, and 
it always falls to this good natured young man. He 
says of course there is room for three in the buggy. 

Sometimes he thinks maybe this old girl can be 
utilized to drive the horse, and then he can converse 
with his own sweet girl with both hands, but in such 
a moment as ye think not he finds that the extra 
girl is afraid of horses, dare not drive, and really 
requires some holding to keep her nerves quiet. He 
tries to drive with one hand and console his good 
girl, who is a little cross at the turn affairs have 
taken, with the other, but it is a failure, and finally 
his good girl says she will drive, and then he has to 
put an arm around them both, which gives more or 
less dissatisfaction the best way you can fix it. 

If we had a boy who didn't seem to have any more 
sense than to make a hat rack of himself to hang 
girls on in a buggy, we should labor with him and 
tall him of the agonies we had experienced in youth 


154 


peck’s sunshine. 


when the boys palmed off two girls on us to take to 
a country picnic, and we believe we can do no greater 
favor to the young men just entering the picnic of 
life than to impress upon them the importance of 
doing one thing at a time, and doing it well. 


A YOUNG couple from Green county stopped at a 
Janesville hotel on their wedding tour, and when 
they went to bed they were in a hurry and blew out 
the gas instead of turning it off. In the night a ter- 
rible smell was heard around the house, and suspi- 
cion naturally pointed to the bridal chamber. The 
door was pounded on but there was no response, and 
the people feared the young folks had gone to 
heaven, so the door was broken down. They had 
not gone to heaven, but they were both senseless, 
and were dragged out into the open air, with little 
ceremony and less clothes. They were brought out 
of the stupor, when they looked at each other in a 
reproachful manner, and as they pulled on their 
clo+h ^s they each acted eis though if they had known 
the horrors of married life they would have re- 
mained single all their lives. 



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